


In the Pines

by VillaKulla



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Angst, Bonding, Coping, Eventual Happyish Ending, Friendship/Love, Hurt/Comfort, I PROMISE I DIDN'T WRITE THIS TO BE MEAN. IT'S ULTIMATELY SUPPOSED TO BE UPLIFTING, I promise there are funny parts, Ideally uplifting, M/M, Nature Scenery, terminal illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-11
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-07 19:27:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 58,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8813272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VillaKulla/pseuds/VillaKulla
Summary: /pajn/1. noun: an evergreen coniferous tree that has clusters of long needle-shaped leaves2. verb: to miss and long for the return of someoneAfter Rose Creek it was starting to feel like Goodnight and Billy had left the spectre of death far behind them.Goodnight should have known it would catch up eventually.





	1. Billy

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Not a part of the Desert Sand series, but I kept the headcanon that they were together for about 10 years before Rose Creek. I also kept the title-is-a-shitty-nature-pun habit, someone please stop me  
> 2\. In this fic Goodnight/Billy survive Rose Creek but Faraday and Horne didn't, sorry:( Sam, Vasquez, and Red Harvest still ride off into the sunset but the idea is that Goodnight/Billy were recuperating and neither were like. Dead. I mean for now at least.  
> 3\. Shoutout to Poemsingreenink/Nopholom for encouraging this idea from the get-go and letting me bounce a lot of it off them!  
> 4\. This was entirely inspired by two lines from Fried Green Tomatoes which I won't give away, but I'm sure fans of that movie will recognize them. One minute it was like *sees gifset on tumblr* the next minute it was like 'LET'S TORTURE MYSELF BY APPLYING THIS TO GOODNIGHT/BILLY!' and then there was a fic  
> 5\. ................also I'm so sorry about this omg 
> 
> THANKS FOR READING DON'T HATE ME IT WAS HONESTLY THE ONLY IDEA I HAD AND IT WAS HARD TO WRITE SO I REALLY HOPE YOU ENJOY

 

 

They didn’t find out until a clear July day in 1884.

 

But looking back, Goodnight realized the first sign had come about a week before. He had seen it. Later it would haunt him how much he had seen it. But it’s not like there was anything he could have done about it anyways.

 

It was still late summer when Goodnight and Billy were riding through the Colorado mountain ravine, the craggy grey cliffs stretching out into the sky, the tops of them fairly bristling with dark green firs and pine trees. The trees stood out sharply against the pale blue sky, growing strong despite the harshness of the peaks that jutted around Goodnight and Billy as they wound their way through the base of the cliffs.

 

Goodnight had grown up among the gentle rolling fields of the South. Those carpets of green covered some of the richest earth in the land, soil that kept pushing up soft blankets of grass, painters’ palettes of wildflowers, clouds of cotton, and wide trees that were groaning under the weight of the Spanish moss, all of it almost an embarrassment of excess. Goodnight used to imagine that when Mother Nature had made America she’d started from the top down, reaching into her basket and scattering handfuls of vegetation through the North; got worried about running out near the bottom and decided to create deserts, and by the time she reached Louisiana she realized she still had quite a lot left over and just emptied it all out, rivers, meadows, forests, bayous and all.

 

Goodnight had been surrounded by riches both inside his home and out. Sometimes when he was walking through the meadows their opulence dazzled him, the lush, richness of the land making his head spin. But looking around the Colorado ridges, he had to admit this Northern state had its own ragged kind of beauty as well. It was a harsher beauty: more sharp and wild than what Goodnight had grown up with. But beautiful nonetheless.

 

Almost as striking as the person he was riding through it all with.

 

He stole a glance at Billy to see if he was admiring any of it. But Billy was slouched in his saddle, looking a little listless.

 

“Want to stop here?” Goodnight asked him. Billy glanced over like he’d been lost in thought.

 

“What was that?”

 

“Wanna break?” Goodnight repeated, gesturing to a more hollow area at the base of a cliff, one that would cut the wind nicely. “We could spend the night here.”

 

“Sure,” Billy said, looking a little grateful for the suggestion. He looked tired. Actually he’d looked tired for a couple days now.

 

After Rose Creek they had both felt a little sick of deserts and wanted to see some proper trees again. So they’d set out for the Northern California coast and its rich, dark forests of fern and pines, all of it growing strong in the face of the salty spray that blew in from the wild ocean that would pound against the coastline. They’d stayed a few years, which was the longest they’d stayed anywhere together in one place. And they’d been good years, almost deliriously happy years, neither of them taking each other for granted after their near miss. But eventually the call to wander had hit them both again, and they were cutting a path back East, no particular goal in mind, just so long as they were going there together.

 

They’d been travelling through the center of the country this time as opposed to the South, just for a change of scenery. And fine scenery it was too. They were currently somewhere in Colorado, pretty south in the state, probably quite close to the New Mexico territories if Goodnight had to guess.

 

They hopped down from their horses, Billy about to head off to find some firewood. Goodnight stopped him.

 

“Why don’t you go make supper while I start unloading?” he asked.

 

“You don’t have to, you set everything up last time,” Billy said, objecting to Goodnight’s sympathy on principle despite trying and failing to conceal a yawn.

 

“I’m faster at it, and the faster we settle down, the faster you can go to bed, mon cher,” Goodnight said, giving Billy’s elbow a rub.

 

“Alright,” Billy said, letting the yawn come through fully, and the brevity of the argument let Goodnight know Billy really must have been more tired than he was letting on. Feeling suddenly unaccountably fond of his partner’s stubborn streak, Goodnight leaned in and gave Billy a quick, impulsive kiss. Billy’s lip quirked up and he drew Goodnight back towards him, kissing him slow and lazy. When they pulled back he gave Goody’s cheek a brush with his knuckles before reaching into his saddlebags to get some food.

 

Goodnight made short work of settling the horses and setting off to find some wood for the fire. He brought back some branches in an armful that he dumped beside Billy who was opening cans of beans and stewed vegetables with one of his knives. Goodnight sat down next to him, smiling like he always did at how undiscerning Billy was with those things. Those long shining instruments of death were also used to whittle, chop food, cut away loose threads from their clothes, or do whatever menial task it was that Billy needed to perform in the moment. Watching Billy use those elaborate, wicked looking blades for something so mundane as a can opener was a sight that never failed to amuse Goodnight.

 

“So what fare comes to us tonight from the five-star kitchen of Chef Rocks?” Goodnight asked, breaking branches apart to use for kindling.

 

“Same as last night,” Billy said with a slight smile. “Beans and jerky. Unless you feel like climbing up there and shooting a squirrel or something.”

 

Goodnight glanced up the cliff they were camping against, seeing no promising handholds on the battered looking rock face. It looked like a broken neck waiting to happen. And it was a miracle Goodnight hadn’t broken his neck already when he’d fallen off the roof of that church, five years ago now. He wasn’t too keen on high places anymore. Maybe it was superstitious of him. But there was tempting fate…and then there was giving fate the goddamn Dance of the Seven Veils.

 

“Thanks I’m fine right here,” he said with a cheery grin at Billy.

 

Billy’s smile deepened and he shook his head. But then he let out a sharp hiss of pain, his smile dropping abruptly.

 

“Billy?” Goodnight asked alarmed.

 

“S’nothing,” Billy said, the word muffled by the knuckle he was sucking into his mouth. “Knife slipped.”

 

Goodnight looked at him incredulously. Knives didn’t _slip_ when Billy Rocks was holding them.

 

“Well let me get you a bandage,” Goodnight said, standing up to get a swath of clean linen from their bags.

 

“Don’t need one,” Billy said, removing his knuckle from his mouth to inspect it, his finger still covered with blood that was steadily pumping from the gash in his knuckle.

 

“And I don’t need tonight’s garnish to be _sauce de sang_ , thank you very much,” Goodnight said, coming back and taking Billy’s hand which he started wrapping gently.

 

“Trying to drip your blood all over my dinner,” Goody said to Billy with a put-upon sigh, shaking his head sorrowfully. “What next, I ask you?”

 

“You’re not usually so picky about my bodily fluids,” Billy said with a grin.

 

Goodnight rolled his eyes as he tied off the bandage, a small spot of red slowly starting to seep through.

 

“That’s because I don’t put them on beef jerky.”

 

“That’s disgusting.”

 

“You started it,” Goodnight said amiably. He frowned at the bandage which was already soaking through.

 

“Well give me my hand back so I can finish this,” Billy said, nodding towards the half-opened cans.

 

“In a minute,” Goody muttered, taking off the wet bandage and wrapping a new clean one a little tighter around Billy’s finger.

 

“Goody…”

 

“Yes yes, finished, whatever your heart desires,” Goodnight said, tying the end of the bandage off and dropping a kiss to back of Billy’s hand before letting go.

 

As far as banter went, it was hardly one of their more impressive exchanges. Maybe they were both a little tired. But the curve of Billy’s lip was genuine as he leaned into Goody, still working open the cans, this time with a large white bandage decorating his finger.

 

A little later while they were eating, Goodnight glanced at the bandage again. It was completely red.

 

“How the hell did that soak through again already?” he asked, frowning. “That was a small cut.”

 

“Must have been deep,” Billy guessed, leaning down while holding his plate, biting the end of the bandage with his teeth and pulling it off. His finger was still bloody.

 

“Well I’m getting some soap so you can clean that properly,” Goodnight said, standing up.

 

“Goody…”

 

But Goody was already retrieving a canteen of water and their soap.

 

“You think I’m going to let you get an infection? That would be just what we need. You get a cut, it gets infected, you refuse to let me clean it, and two weeks later I’m amputating your entire arm,” Goodnight said, walking back.

 

“Do you have to make everything dramatic?” Billy asked, holding out his bloody hand, already resigning himself to Goodnight’s fussing.

 

“Keeps things interesting,” Goodnight said.

 

Billy smiled. “Well if you ever die it won’t be of boredom.”

 

“Boredom with you?” Goodnight asked, smiling back while he cleaned Billy’s hand. “Never.”

 

“Or from a lack of romance in your life,” Billy added, teasing Goodnight a little for his need to make everything sappy.

 

“I wouldn’t provide it if I didn’t know how much you eat it up, Billy Rocks,” Goodnight said, looking smugly at Billy.

 

Billy shrugged, but for all that his eyes still looked tired, they were sparkling at Goodnight.

 

“Caught me.” Billy’s lip tugged up like a string was pulling at it.

 

And really, how could Goodnight _not_ lean in and kiss him again?

 

Later when they were settling in to sleep, Goodnight nodded to the fresh bandage on Billy’s hand as it curled around him.

 

“That’s not too tight is it?”

 

“It’s fine, Goody,” and Goodnight could practically hear the eye roll from where Billy was behind him, spooning him.

 

“It had better be because I’d hate for your finger to fall off in the middle of the night," Goodnight said with a large yawn, shuffling back to press closer against Billy’s chest. “I happen to have a very vested interest in your fingers. All of them.”

 

“Well if you stop talking and go to sleep, I might use some of them to wake you up tomorrow,” Billy murmured into his ear, sliding his hand over Goodnight’s hip, brushing tantalizingly close to Goodnight’s groin, a tease.

 

“I expect all five to present and accounted for,” Goodnight mumbled, shutting his eyes. And with the warmth of the fire at their sides and the warmth of Billy curved around his back, he was asleep within a few minutes.

 

He woke up a few hours later. Not from a nightmare. Those had actually lessened in frequency ever since Rose Creek. Not gone altogether…just lessened. But there was still the sense of something being off. He blinked his eyes open and realized Billy was no longer lying behind him. He leaned up a bit, looking around for Billy in the dark, and spotted him rooting around in one of their saddlebags. Billy straightened up while pulling something white out of the bag, and Goodnight recognized it as the bandages. Billy pulled off the bandage covering his finger, and tossed it into the fire that was still crackling. And for a brief second, outlined against the fire, Goodnight saw the bandage fall red and dripping into the flames, soaked clean through.

 

Billy dumped some water onto his finger and tied a fresh length of bandage around it, a few more times than a cut of that size warranted. But then again, cuts of that size weren’t supposed to bleed through three bandages in one evening, however deep. Goodnight felt a low pull of worry he couldn’t identify, a whispering in the back of his head as he watched Billy’s figure in the dark.

 

But then Billy was walking back over to their bedroll and lying back down, sliding back in next to Goodnight and pulling the large blanket over them. He curled up against Goodnight, sliding an arm around his waist. He pressed a kiss to Goodnight’s ear, silencing the low whisper that had been brushing against Goodnight’s mind. And closing his eyes again, Goodnight moved in closer to Billy’s warmth and fell back asleep.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

“Well,” said the doctor, leaning back up. “It’s healed up nicely. Everything looks fine.”

 

“That’s good to hear,” Goodnight said from where he was sitting on the doctor’s table, gingerly rotating his ankle in circles. He’d sprained it the month prior on the road and had spent a few weeks riding with an ugly, bluish-yellowish bruise covering his ankle. But Billy was a deft hand at treating sprains and had wrapped it up so precisely it didn’t even hurt. But when they’d hit this little mountain town in their trek across Southern Colorado, Billy had insisted Goodnight get it checked out by an expert.

 

“Just don’t twist it again anytime soon and you should be in the clear,” the doctor said, pulling off his gloves and walking over to his desk.

 

“Thank you kindly,” Goodnight said, pulling his sock back on. “Oh hey if you’re able to spare a bit more time…” He looked around for Billy who was gazing around the signs and posters and fliers in the doctor’s shabby but clean little office. Goodnight knew he was comparing the different fonts and silently judging the illegible ones. Only one of Billy’s _many_ endearing quirks.

 

“Hey Gutenberg,” Goodnight called out to him. Billy turned around slowly, raising an eyebrow at Goody as though asking _is that me?_ Goodnight grinned at him and hopped off the doctor’s table.

 

“Show the doc your finger,” he said, jerking his head over to the table for Billy to take a seat.

 

“It’s fine,” Billy said in a tone that said he couldn’t believe Goodnight was still pushing it.

 

“He cut it a week ago and it bled through about five different bandages in the first day,” Goodnight said to the doctor, ignoring Billy.

 

“You don’t say?” asked the doctor, coming around his desk again. He was a younger man than both of them, although most people felt younger than them at this point. His smooth face was frowning a little as he walked over to Billy. “Do you have thin blood?”

 

Billy looked at Goodnight incredulously.

 

“Well do you?” Goodnight asked, amused at the face Billy was pulling.

 

“How the hell would I know that?” Billy muttered.

 

“Are you anemic?” the doctor asked, twirling his finger in a motion for Billy to remove the bandage that was still on it, although not to soak up blood at this point, just to cover it while it healed.

 

“No he’s not,” Goodnight answered as Billy pulled the bandage off, holding up his finger. The doctor peered at it.

 

“Well it looks clean. Closing up neatly so it couldn’t have been too deep of a cut…but you say it still kept bleeding through bandages?” the doctor asked, looking back up at Billy. Billy just nodded.

 

The doctor frowned again in a way that was starting to put Goodnight on edge.

 

“What?” Goodnight asked from where he was leaning against the wall, boots back on, watching them.

 

“I’m sure it’s nothing but…” the doctor lifted his hand to his mouth, tapping his knuckle against his chin, the motion of a longtime nail-biter who knew that his habit wouldn’t go over too well in his line of work. He looked back at Billy, eyes sharp.

 

“You feeling tired lately?”

 

“Yes,” Billy and Goodnight said at the same time. Goodnight stepped away from the wall, as he watched them with a growing feeling of concern.

 

“Can’t be,” the doctor muttered to himself.

 

“ _What_ ,” Goodnight asked again, a hint of irritation creeping into his voice.

 

“I’m sure I’m just jumping to conclusions,” the doctor said, reaching out to clap Billy on the shoulder. But when he did, Billy took in a sharp gasp of pain.

 

“What is it?” Goodnight asked, walking towards Billy immediately with the brisk, controlled steps of a soldier, his heart suddenly pounding. But he didn’t let it show, just stood beside Billy taking even breaths as he looked calmly at his partner.

 

“Just sore,” Billy said, starting to sound annoyed by the attention.

 

“Gonna ask you to take your shirt off if it’s all the same to you though,” the doctor said, reaching for a long, listening tube that looked like a large ear trumpet, but Goodnight recognized it as a stethoscope.

 

“But I don’t –“

 

“Just do what he says, Billy,” Goodnight said, unaware he was using the low, clear voice he would use for other sharpshooters in the war when he was giving instructions. He would sometimes yell if he felt that they needed to be roused up. But he had rarely shouted in fighting because a shout just got caught up in all the rest of the cacophony of battle. In those moments a soft instruction could cut across the noise like a whip.

 

“Please?” he added, softening as he looked into Billy’s eyes, sounding a little more human again.

 

Billy swallowed and nodded, reaching up to unhook the buttons of his shirt. And when let his shirt slip off his shoulders, Goodnight sucked in a breath.

 

Bruises mottled the entirety of Billy’s upper back, a few more bruises dripping down his ribs. They were distorted blooms of purple and blue, and Goodnight thought absurdly of nightshade and its swollen, poisonous berries.

 

“Jesus,” the doctor muttered.

 

“Billy when did this happen?” Goodnight asked, wanting to reach out to steady himself on Billy’s shoulder, in what would have been a bad idea for many reasons. He settled for clutching the edge of the table.

 

“When did _what_ happen?” Billy asked exasperatedly.

 

Goodnight almost wanted to snap at him for still brushing it off, but realized just in time that of course Billy couldn’t see his own back.

 

“This,” the doctor said, holding a mirror behind Billy’s back and one in front of his face so that he could see, as though he was a barber and Billy was just here for a haircut.

 

Billy’s eyes widened. “I have no idea,” he said. He leaned his head back to look at Goodnight. “Was that there last night?”

 

Goodnight just shook his head silently. He knew because last night he’d been poised over Billy’s arched back, slowly thrusting into him beside the campfire, Billy quivering beneath him, begging him to go faster, Goodnight just bending down to lick a slow, languid path between Billy’s shoulder blades. The skin had been as smooth and gold as ever.

 

“Tree branch?” Goodnight guessed, his forehead creasing. “He climbed a tree this morning, loose branch fell on his shoulders,” he explained to the doctor.

 

“Big one?” the doctor asked frowning.

 

“Not really,” Goodnight said quietly. Billy had just laughed and shaken off the dry pieces which clattered down the limbs of the tree that Billy was climbing for Goody, to see if a crow’s nest he’d spied had any eggs in it. It did, and they’d fried them for breakfast.

 

The doctor gave a brief warning before placing the cold end of his stethoscope to the center of Billy’s mottled back, putting his ear against the thinner end of the tube.

 

“Could you take a deep breath for me?” he murmured, and Billy did. It sounded normal to Goodnight, but the doctor’s frown deepened.

 

“And let it out,” he said. Billy expelled the air from his lungs and the doctor straightened up, tapping the end of the stethoscope against his chin.

 

“What is it?” Billy asked in a low voice, sitting tensely on the table.

 

The doctor let out a breath before turning to address them.

 

“Look…I don’t want to alarm you boys seeing as how it could be nothing but…I saw someone like this once.”

 

“Someone like what?” Goodnight asked.

 

“Like him,” the doctor said, placing the stethoscope on the table. “It was in an old woman to be sure, but same exact symptoms. She’d be sewing and even just a prick with the needle would bleed and bleed. She bruised easily, just from brushing up against things, and the bruises looked like this. She was fatigued and –“

 

“But she was an old woman,” Goodnight interrupted. “That could be any of ‘em.”

 

“I agree,” the doctor said calmly. “But I listened to his heart beat and same irregular blood flow.”

 

“Irregular blood - what the hell are you saying?” Goodnight asked impatiently, trying to block out the sudden roaring in his ears.

 

“I’m saying his condition reminds me exactly of hers,” the doctor said. “To a T. I treated her when I was training to become a doctor, and the only reason her case sticks out in my mind is that…is that she was the first patient I ever lost,” the doctor finished reluctantly.

 

Goodnight’s hand tightened over the gurney.

 

“I don’t want to alarm you,” the doctor said again. “But I’m about ninety percent sure it’s the same illness I’m seeing here.”

 

“ _What_ illness?” Goodnight burst out.

 

“Well that’s just it. Me and the doctor who trained me never knew, but she’d seen cases like it before. In young people, old…” the doctor trailed off and looked at Billy.

 

“Well…what’s the cure?” Goodnight asked, fighting to keep his breathing steady.

 

“We…” the doctor looked between Goodnight and Billy a little helplessly. “We don’t know. And we tried our damndest, trust me on that. Woman who trained me had been working on a cure ever since I met her. She lost her mother to the same thing and that’s why she was so determined to go to medical school despite being a woman. She wanted to come up with something to cure it or at least slow it down. But…” the doctor lifted his shoulders looking genuinely sorry. “Maybe someday they’ll come up with one. But I just don’t think the medicine is available yet.”

 

“So how long?” Billy asked flatly from where he was sitting. Goodnight looked at him confused, thinking for a moment Billy was asking about how long it would be until more advanced treatments were available. Hypothetical questions were very unlike Billy. But then the realization of what Billy was really asking hit Goodnight like a knife to the stomach.

 

“Hard to say,” the doctor said, motioning to Billy that he could do up his shirt again. “The old woman I saw lasted about half a year by the time we noticed it. But she was old and sick from other things. I’d say you could bet on at least a few more months than that since you’re younger than she was, and you look pretty healthy. I mean –“ the doctor winced slightly at the slip, and seemed to realize there was no way to cover the faux pas, so he didn’t. He walked over to his desk and took a paper and started scribbling something on it.

 

Goodnight’s breathing was coming hard. Billy held his hand out behind him, and Goodnight took it immediately not sure if Billy was extending it for his own comfort or for Goody’s. But Goodnight held it tightly either way, trying to stop the room from spinning, trying to focus only on Billy’s pulse beneath his finger tips, his pulse that was apparently pumping an ‘irregular blood flow’ through him…

 

“Bullshit,” Goodnight said suddenly. He took in a breath, squeezing Billy’s hand harder, but they both let go when the doctor lifted his head up at them from by his desk.

 

“You…” Goodnight said gesturing helplessly. “You look at his finger and…and all of a sudden you tell us he’s…he’s…”

 

Goodnight couldn’t even say it. So instead he said: “I want a second opinion.”

 

“I figured you’d say that,” the doctor said, coming around the table. “Next proper doctor is two towns east of here, about a four day ride. Got a medical degree and everything. Name of Doctor Black. I’ve written ‘em a letter to say I sent you.” He folded up the paper and handed it to Billy because Goodnight was standing with his fists clenched. “If you boys want to get it checked out again, they’re the best doctor ‘round these parts.”

 

“Well then that’s what we’ll do, “ said Goodnight briskly. “Let’s go, Billy,” he said, giving his partner a gentle nudge, trying to clear the roaring out of his head. He had been about to thank the doctor out of ingrained courtesy but…how do you thank someone for that?

 

“I should warn you though,” the doctor said as they started to leave. “They’re just gonna say the same thing I did.”

 

“How’s that?” Goodnight asked, turning back around with a frown.

 

The doctor gave them a sad smile.

 

“She’s the one who trained me.”

 

 

*

 

“Can you believe him?” Goodnight huffed out, back atop his horse as they left the small mountain town, saddlebags a little heavier from supplies.

 

“I can,” Billy said in a low voice, swaying in his saddle beside Goodnight.

 

Goodnight whirled around to look at him. “Billy you can’t honestly think he’s right. Here we are in the middle of nowhere, some nothing town, some hick doctor tells us you’re…you’ve got an incurable illness and you just _believe_ him? Just like that?”

 

“He didn’t seem like a hick doctor,” Billy said quietly. “And you know it.”

 

“Well fine, he seemed to be slightly more aware of his immediate surroundings than some of the other jokers we’ve come across but…but Billy, _still_. You’re just gonna accept what he says?” Goodnight lowered his voice. “You _know_ what he was saying right?”

 

“I do,” Billy said tiredly. “I’m just trying to be pragmatic, Goody.”

 

“ _I’m_ trying to be pragmatic,” Goodnight said, affronted. “You’re the one being dramatic. You probably just have an iron deficiency or something.”

 

“I’ve eaten the same thing as you every day for fifteen years,” Billy said. “If I’m iron deficient you’re iron deficient. And you feel fine.”

 

‘Fine’ was most assuredly _not_ what Goodnight was feeling right now. He felt like every delusion he’d ever had was trying to pierce its way out of his skin. It was one thing to be a paranoid wreck where his own life was concerned. But this was _Billy’s_ life they were talking about. And Goodnight would stay calm and level headed for Billy if it killed him.

 

“I just don’t think we should be jumping to conclusions, Billy,” he said gently. “Especially not one like that.”

 

“I’m not jumping to conclusions I just…” Billy looked like he was thinking. He turned to look at Goodnight properly and asked: “Do you ever just _know_ something, Goody?”

 

Goodnight looked at him and felt a sharp pang in his chest at every line and angle of Billy’s face as he took him in. He knew it better than his own at this point, after so many years of it being the last thing Goodnight saw when he closed his eyes, and the first thing to fill his vision waking up. As constant as the rising and falling of the sun.

 

“Know what?” Goodnight asked uncertainly, a curl of dread spiraling up through him. Because there was that whisper again at the back of his mind, the one that had plagued him for so much of his life. The whisper every time he lined up a Union soldier in his crosshairs, every time he pulled the trigger, telling him he was damning himself for it. The whisper that had whisked through him with every fugitive he’d ever tracked, spiriting him down a damnable path. The whisper that had been mocking him gently in Rose Creek, getting louder and louder with every day that Bogue’s army drew closer.

 

There were two times where Goodnight could clearly remember that whisper being drowned out. The first was when he’d tracked a fugitive through Texas, and something about the fugitive’s determined stare had cut straight through the frenzy that clouded Goodnight’s mind on a daily basis. And instead of lifting his rifle he’d lifted his hand and found himself saying in a voice deep within him, his true voice, one that was louder than any whisper: “Pleased to meet you, Billy Rocks.”

 

The second time that voice had drowned out the whispers was when he was riding out of a cursed town and had pulled his horse to a stop. Goodnight had seen so much death, been the cause of even more, an Angel carrying away souls with every shot. But if those souls in the town were some he could have any part in saving…it might not be enough to balance out his sins in the eyes of God. But God wasn’t the one who had to meet Goodnight’s eyes in the mirror every day.

 

And so Goodnight had listened to the voice inside of him, pulled the reins of his horse, wheeled it around and ridden back.

 

The whisper had stayed largely silent since then. Goodnight felt as even as he ever had.

 

But it had been murmuring to him ever since he’d watched Billy by the flames of their campfire the week before, taking off a bloody bandage, knowing without fully knowing that _something_ was licking at their heels, even if he didn’t know what yet.

 

And the worst of it was? That stronger voice inside of Goodnight, the one that was able to drown out the whisper more often than not these days? It was there running alongside the whisper too, and it agreed.

 

Billy was talking again, something about cats, and Goodnight forced himself back to reality to listen.

 

“…it’s like what you told me about cats. How they start to hide or run away when they can sense their death. Because they just know.”

 

There. One of them had said the word ‘death’ and it dangled in the space between them like a noose.

 

It’s not like they’d never felt the brush of death before. They both knew what it was like to have a life coloured by death, and coming together - so many years ago now - hadn’t changed that. In fact, it seemed like death was the only thing they flirted with more than each other. Every time Billy let his belt drop to the sand and get into a crouch while staring down the barrel of a gun: that was one foot in the door. Every time Goodnight waltzed into the middle of some argument with no more armour than his name: that was the door widening a little more. And in Rose Creek that door had stood wide open, both of them swaying on the threshold.

 

But after their escape it felt like they’d stepped out of that doorway altogether. It had been such a close shave that afterwards neither of them really had the stomach for playing with fire. They hadn’t gone completely legit, but for all intents and purposes they might as well have been retired. Even before Rose Creek they had the money to afford it. The only thing they couldn’t afford was losing each other. What they had with each other was worth too much to let burn.

 

But now it felt like Goodnight’s entire world was on fire, and all he could do was just stand back and watch the flames.

 

“Billy I…” he said, in a hoarser voice than he’d been aiming for. And then his throat went completely dry and he couldn’t say a thing.

 

“Yeah,” Billy said. “Look…you’re right that we should talk to someone else. But I think you just need to prepare yourself to hear the same thing.”

 

Goodnight looked achingly at him, and when Billy looked back his eyes looked just as helpless as Goodnight felt. But Billy swallowed and there was that familiar set of his chin. That man had more resolve in his posture than Goodnight had ever felt in his entire life.

 

“And in the meantime I don’t want anything to be different, okay?” he asked Goodnight. “Until we know more let’s just be as normal as possible.”

 

 _Nothing_ about this felt normal. Normal was rapidly crumbling down around Goodnight like a rockslide, the further into the mountain path they rode. But Goodnight forced himself to swallow down the scream building in his throat, and said:

 

“The day you manage to behave like a normal human being is the day I _know_ I’m hallucinating.”

 

It was a weak joke at best, and it almost killed Goodnight to say it. But the effort was more than worth it for the relief and gratitude in Billy’s eyes.

 

They continued to ride down the path. Normally. It was normal when they broke for camp, the sun sinking lower in the sky, spilling deep red down the craggy cliffs. It was normal when they chatted while they ate, both of them ignoring the feeling in the air that swooped around their camp, circling lower and lower, talons outstretched, ready to carry one of them away…

 

Goodnight did his best not to shudder, sure he felt the beating of wings overhead. He shook it off and squared his shoulders. Normal.

 

What _wasn’t_ normal was just before bed, the sky completely black at this point, the fire a drop of red in the long empty stretch between the mountains. Goodnight was standing over the blankets unbuttoning his vest getting ready to sleep. He was about to lie down when he looked up and saw Billy watching him, standing half in the shadows, half lit up by the blaze of the campfire. He was looking at Goodnight with an expression Goodnight couldn’t make out, biting his lip, his chest starting to rise and fall a little quicker, vibrating with some unseen energy.

 

Goodnight was someone whose heart was full of words. Words flowed through him like blood, his heart pumping them into his veins, coursing through his body, until the words rose in his chest and were spilling out of his mouth. If he didn’t get them out it was like his heart might swell and swell, straining from all the words he was holding back until his heart burst, losing every word he’d ever felt in his life. But he’d give up every word he ever knew if he could hang onto the one he said now:

 

“Billy,” he breathed, not knowing what else to say. Because when everything else was in doubt there was _always_ Billy.

 

Billy made a low sound that might have been Goodnight’s name as he fell towards him like a dam breaking, grabbing Goodnight and practically crushing him to him, kissing him forcefully, more teeth than lips, almost like he wanted to devour Goodnight entirely, like Goodnight wasn’t already his down to his very soul.

 

They fell to the blankets kissing frantically, hands tearing at clothes, skin straining together, Billy reaching for him and closing a hand brutally around them both and jerking them together in rough strokes, the press of them together so dry it almost _hurt_ , but Goodnight arching into the hurt if this was the only way to feel it. He dug his fingers into Billy’s shoulders hard enough to bruise, and he shivered with pure, brutal need when Billy let go of them to spit into his hand, stroking himself, repeating the motion, and was then pushing roughly into Goodnight, stretching him to the limit, dry enough for it to burn. But Goodnight rocked up harder into that burn, gritting his teeth at the searing pressure that drove into him again and again, his nails raking a path down Billy’s back as he looked up at Billy braced over him, the man’s eyes almost black in the night, the only reflection coming from the flames of the campfire, his lips a deep red glow, a branding iron that scorched the flesh on Goodnight’s neck before the man was biting down on the skin _hard_. Goodnight buried his own face in Billy’s neck and was coming in almost violent pulses, clenching hard around Billy until he felt the man spending himself with a guttural moan.

 

The clung together shaking and Goodnight blinked back the hotness in his eyes. What had been a whisper before was now screaming through him, and lying there on the blankets, the fire blazing beside them, he knew then as surely as Billy seemed to know. Because that was not how they normally fell together at all. They’d done everything imaginable with and to each other, but even at their most frantic there was always an undercurrent of tenderness there. The same instinct they’d always had with each other, which was to give and not take. Life had already doled out so much harshness on the both of them separately, that when they came together the chance to be soft and the sweetness of it was too much to resist. Like they had room to just stop and breathe. Like they had all the time in the world.

 

Goodnight pushed the damp hair away from Billy’s forehead with a shaking hand, looking up into the man’s eyes. Billy’s eyes were slowly returning to brown, the black slipping out of them. And Goodnight couldn’t help but think of all that time together they’d had, and how even that was starting to slip away too.

 

*

 

 

“Well,” the old woman said, leaning away from a tarnished brass microscope, and placing her spectacles back over her hawk-like nose. “I’m afraid I agree with young Henry. I believe his prognosis was exactly right.”

 

Goodnight and Billy looked at each other, Billy clutching a pad to the inside of his elbow where the woman had drawn some blood before placing it on a glass slide. It was one of many cunning looking instruments she had in her large log cabin that doubled as a house and work quarters.

 

“He…he said about nine months,” Goodnight said through the tightness in his throat, assuming that ‘Henry’ was the last doctor they’d seen who’d sent them to this old woman who had trained him who was apparently a qualified doctor herself.

 

Doctor Black removed the slide with Billy’s blood sample on it, nodding. “That sounds about right. Give or take a month or two. It’s hard to know because everyone I’ve seen reacts differently. But it all comes to the same end.”

 

Goodnight and Billy stared desperately at each other, and Goodnight felt a low, hot, watery kind of despair flowing through him that he knew would well up as tears if he didn’t tamp it down. So he swallowed and reached out, taking Billy’s hand in his. And when the little old woman doctor turned around again, unlike the last time Goodnight held Billy’s hand in a doctor’s office, this time he didn’t let go. What was the point? Considering the circumstances it seemed like an almost trivial thing to be concerned with.

 

Whatever the old woman chose to read into the clasped hands of the two men sitting in her office, her thoughts didn’t show. She just bustled around the room, putting things away and taking out pill bottles with the briskness of a much younger person.

 

Billy let out a long breath, and then sat up a little straighter, holding his shoulders like stone, completely still. It made Goodnight’s heart ache to see.

 

“So I’m dying,” he said bluntly.

 

The woman looked over at him. “Yes,” she said, equally straightforwardly. “I’m very sorry, young man, but that’s the truth of the matter.”

 

Billy nodded, confirming what it was he already knew, and what Goodnight already knew even though he could hardly believe it. Because of all the ways Goodnight had pictured them dying - accident on the road, shooting match gone wrong, blaze of glory, lying curled together in a bed somewhere with grey streaking both of their hair - somehow he’d never pictured random, indiscriminate illness. And he’d never pictured it striking only _one_ of them.

 

The woman came over with some pill bottles that rattled with each brisk step. “Now one of these a day should strengthen you in the interim. They’re for the blood. They’ll make you less susceptible to bruising, internally and externally, and it’ll stop you from bleeding so freely. So you won’t have to worry about cutting yourself shaving,” she added, as though cutting himself shaving was something Billy ever did. Billy only needed to shave about once a week, but sometimes he would do Goodnight, dragging a razor over his cheeks and jaw, over the line of his throat, before gently patting him down with a towel and bending down to kiss the smooth, tingling skin of Goodnight’s cheek.

 

Goodnight felt his hands shake, realizing for the first time the full reality of everything he was losing. Before he could shake apart completely, letting out the howl that was building inside of him, the doctor was speaking again:

 

“But they’re just a help, not a solution. You should still avoid overly strenuous activity.”

 

“And what if,” Goodnight whispered and then stopped. He knew his eyes were red, knew his voice was quavering from the way Billy’s hand tightened around his. He squeezed it back and looked up at the doctor. “What if we want to keep riding?” He addressed his next words to Billy: “Just travel normally?”

 

Billy gave him a tight smile that Goodnight couldn’t find in him to return, but he managed to brush Billy’s finger with his own.

 

“I can’t recommend it,” the doctor said, shaking her head. “Things should be normal for a good while longer yet, but my experience with this illness has been that when it hits it hits hard. And you wouldn’t want to be riding in the middle of a precarious situation when it does. And besides. This illness can be nothing short of a misery even in a comfortable bed. He would be in a great deal of discomfort on the road, especially when winter hits, and I don’t care how tough you young men are, or how many bones you’ve broken. You’ve never had to deal with something like this.”

 

Her mouth tightened, creating even more lines around it, and Goodnight vaguely remembered the other doctor saying something about this woman’s mother, and the whole reason she’d gone into medicine. She took in another breath and looked up at them with a little more sympathy in her sharp eyes.

 

“My advice to you is to find somewhere to settle down, and find it before the snow hits, or before he gets too sick to travel. Find it and make it as comfortable as you can. That’s about as much as you can do.”

 

Goodnight felt like he’d been hit by a train. Impact and then nothing but roaring and screeching in his ears as he felt his heart being torn apart, dragged under the wheels. He took in shallow breaths as he stared at Billy’s face, Billy’s endlessly captivating face, blurred by the tears that Goodnight refused to let fall, because if he did then he might never stop crying and that was the last thing Billy needed.

 

They sat there in silence as Doctor Black left the chair in front of them and went to putter around her desk, appearing as though she was looking for something, but more likely to give them a moment. But a moment for what? Neither could seem to do anything but sit there, hands clasped, staring dumbly at each other, no idea what the next move was.

 

“Do you…want to go back to California?” Goodnight finally managed to get out in a cracked, hesitant voice.

 

Billy shook his head. “Too far at this point,” he said quietly, looking at his knees. And something about the gesture caused Goodnight’s face to crumple and then before he knew it he was being pressed to Billy’s chest, Billy’s palm on his back a soothing weight. Goodnight was _not_ going to fall apart here. He knew he’d have to at some point, but even just the act of Billy comforting _him_ right now felt more selfish than Goodnight could stand.

 

So he sniffed once, hoping he hadn’t left a damp spot against Billy’s shirt and drew himself up, letting go of Billy’s hand to scrub his fists over his eyes, heart slicing into pieces all the while.

 

They sat there in silence and finally the doctor looked over at them both again, eyebrows furrowed.

 

“Do you have anywhere you can go?”

 

Goodnight saw Billy shrug out of the corner of his eye. Theoretically they could go anywhere. They had few ties and their traveling had never been so much about destination anyways, just so long as they were together when they got there.

 

The doctor pulled a pencil out of her severe white bun, and Goodnight was reminded for a ridiculous moment of Billy’s hairpin, Billy in a shooting ring, shoulders straight, the curve of his body held taut, pulled back in a coil, ready to whisk a hand back to his glinting silver hairpin which he’d whip forward, striking deadly as a snake.

 

The doctor just tapped her pencil against her teeth.

 

“You know, I had an uncle like you two.”

 

Goodnight narrowed his eyes, wondering if she was implying what he thought she was, and if so, why? Goodnight didn’t think she was the kind to rat them out, and even if she was they could always skip town before anyone was the wiser. So why the hell was she bringing it up at this point when it didn’t even _matter_?

 

“I fail to see what –“ he began stiffly, but she was cutting in.

 

“Oh don’t get your stirrups in a twist,” she said, waving away Goodnight’s protests. “There’s not a single thing I didn’t come across in medical school. And patients seemed to think it was less intimidating to share certain things with me than the other male doctors. I can’t imagine why,” she added a bit dryly.

 

Goodnight had known some medical students when he was sent to college, and he tried to picture this old woman among their ilk. Women with medical degrees were not unheard of, but it only happened once in a blue moon and those women had to be prepared to work a thousand times as hard as anyone else, with a thousand times more grief for it. How this sharp old woman had managed to convince a university to take her on and work her way through to a degree was a story that Goodnight would normally have been very interested in. Any other time but now.

 

“As I was saying, my uncle,” she continued. “He had a cabin about a half hour’s ride out of town if you keep following the mountain path. He’s dead now, God rest his soul, and he left the cabin to me. It’s been closed up for years and might take a fair amount of work to set up. But…”

 

She looked between them.

 

“I’ve never had any use for it. If you’d like to stay there it makes absolutely no difference to me.”

 

This was all so…so _much_ for Goodnight to take in. Death, houses…it seemed like so much permanence had been flung at him from every angle, directly contrary to the rambling life they knew with its ever-changing landscapes and the ephemeral acquaintances they made, their only notion of ‘permanence’ being what they had with each other. And not even that was permanent anymore.

 

Billy leaned towards him.

 

“What do you think?” he murmured.

 

“What do _you_ think?” Goodnight asked. What he thought was so irrelevant right now that he’d do whatever it was that Billy decided.

 

“I don’t want to be travelling and put you in danger because I can’t keep up,” Billy said reluctantly. “We’d have to stop somewhere eventually, and one place is the same as the next to me.”

 

“So we just stop here?” Goodnight asked. “In…”

 

He looked up at Doctor Black. “Where are we?” he asked. He suddenly realized he hadn’t taken stock of the little mountain town when they’d ridden in at all.

 

“Pine Rocks **,”** she said, not seeming to take any offense.

 

Goodnight started, and then chuckled with absolutely no humour.

 

“How very auspicious.”

 

It just seemed ridiculous that after everything, after all the paths they’d taken, all the places they’d ended up in, they should be considering stopping in this town he’d never heard of in a state he’d scarcely set foot in until now. He turned back to Billy.

 

“I guess it would be good to be near a town in case of emergency –“

 

“Or supplies,” Billy added.

 

“Or a doctor,” the old woman cut in adjusting her spectacles. “Should I take that as a yes?”

 

Goodnight and Billy looked at each other and when Billy nodded tiredly, Goodnight looked back at her.

 

“Why not?” he said, resignation written into every word.

 

 

*

 

They wound their way up the mountain path, the horses picking their way over stones, their hooves pressing the many scattered pine needles into the dirt. They were rising higher and getting farther away from the town in its late summer valley, the sturdy wooden houses, the large general store, the mill, and other log buildings smattered beneath them, nestled among the pines, wood smoke rising from their chimneys. Goodnight wondered what the cabin they were heading towards would be like. The doctor had sketched out some directions for them and given them a key, and Goodnight had thanked her more graciously than he had when she’d first made the offer. But he was still reeling too much to really care about anything at the moment except for Billy.

 

Billy rode beside him quietly, the setting sun breaking out through the thick, prickly brushes of spruce and firs that lined the path, lighting up his face with streaks of sunlight that ran over his form as he swayed ever so slightly in his saddle. He held himself normally, reins gripped loosely in his hand, hair wisping loosely across his eyes which were far away. And Goodnight allowed himself to just _look_ , to take in every last detail of what Billy looked like when he was riding beside him. Billy had been riding beside him for over fifteen years, never more than a tilt of the chin away, and Goodnight was suddenly consumed with regret that he’d never looked _more_. They’d spent almost a third of their lives riding together. Billy’s figure beside him had been as constant as the horizon. It was a horizon that Goodnight had never imagined they’d ever actually _reach_.

 

Billy turned to look at him and his gaze pierced through Goodnight, and Goodnight knew he was thinking the exact same thing. And all too soon they were rounding a bend in the forest path, and coming across a clearing. Goodnight could make out the shape of a cabin in the trees and pulled his horse to a stop.

 

“Wait,” Billy said quietly, and Goodnight sat there in his saddle and let Billy look his fill, his eyes taking in every bit of Goodnight where he sat atop his horse.

 

Eventually Billy seemed to sigh and he nodded at Goodnight, and the two slowly dismounted for the last time.

 

They looked across the clearing towards the house, a large, sturdy looking log cabin with a wide veranda that looked like it went around the whole way. It was made up of dark wood, the beams tightly stacked until they reached a high, triangular roof. To the side Goodnight could make out a stone chimney. As they drew closer Goodnight could see some of the wood was quite weathered and the glass in the windows was quite dirty. But it was big and looked solidly built and all it really needed was to be comfortable.

 

There was a large stable on the other side of the clearing and they noted it with relief. They walked their horses over to it, leaving them in the stalls while they went to check out the house, Goodnight turning the key in the front door. The lock was rusted over from lack of use and it took a few jiggles. And then they were pushing the door opened with a long screeching sound, light pouring into the house.

 

The dust would have to be the first thing to be taken care of, Goodnight could see, dust swirling and dancing in the streams of sunlight that shot through the open living area. There was a backdoor too and they walked out to the back porch and found themselves looking out at a large deep lake, just a short walk away. It must be the source of the large stream that flowed down the mountain and cut through the town, powering its mill. The lake ran from side to side, disappearing into the trees and going around the bend, and it stretched out for a few miles across. The dark, fuzzy treeline was still visible on the other side, and even further behind them were mountains: rippling across the landscape and standing out in purple shadows against the sky.

 

They’d have to admire it another time though. Goodnight saw what looked like a large shed attached to the house and he walked over to push the door open, confirming his guess when he saw brooms, buckets, and two feather dusters that were more molt than feather.

 

He tossed one to Billy.

 

“Shall we?” he asked, trying his best to muster up a smile. Billy nodded, already tying his bandana around his face.

 

Getting the dust off every surface and sweeping it out of the cabin ended up taking a couple of hours. In a different situation Goodnight could have seen himself tickling Billy with feathers while they worked, maybe dumping a load of dust into his hair if he were feeling particularly bothersome. But it would have felt like a pretense at this point.

 

But eventually they did manage to get every last speck of dust out of the house, and Goodnight could get a better idea of the interior. It was wide and spacious enough to give them plenty of room to breathe, but not so big that it would be drafty. There was a main living area which consisted of a large sofa and two deep armchairs on a carpet, all of them angled towards a large fireplace. Goodnight had dusted off some bookshelves around it, noting with relief that there was some reading if he ever felt the urge, although most of the books seemed to be about fly fishing.

 

The walls were decorated with all kinds of game: a deer head, a bass mounted above the fireplace, a stuffed duck flying over the wall, a wide pair of antlers, a stuffed weasel curving over a bookshelf. Goodnight had never liked taxidermy. But they’d come across it in every mountain locale lately, so he dusted it off as absently as the shelves. The kitchen looked out over the lake, and a series of doors led away from the living space. One went to an outhouse that was attached to the cabin, and there were two bedrooms, the larger of the two containing a double bed that Goodnight and Billy had already shook out, both knowing that’s where they’d be sleeping. They’d found a closet full of extra blankets, some woolen, some fur, and they while they smelled strongly of mothballs they were all thick. At least they wouldn’t freeze.

 

They went back out to check on the horses and make sure they had enough feed until they could go buy more in the town, and turned back to look at what was, for all intents and purposes, their new house.

 

“I guess the first thing to do would be to make sure the chimney’s not blocked up before trying to light a fire,” Goodnight mused.

 

“And the roof,” Billy added. “Saw a couple leaks.”

 

Goodnight’s stomach clenched unpleasantly at the thought of going up on the roof, but there was no way in hell he was letting Billy go up there so he just said: “I’ll take care of it.”

 

“Walls too,” Billy threw in. “We should make sure they’re sealed up before winter.”

 

“Yeah,” Goodnight agreed. “What about mosquito netting? Get some screens for the windows and doors?”

 

Billy shook his head tiredly. “No point. Summer will be over soon. And next summer…”

 

He trailed off, not saying what they both knew, which was that in all likelihood Billy wouldn’t even _be_ here next summer.

 

Goodnight felt the yell rising up inside of him again, the one strangling his insides, the one he’d been trying so hard to suppress ever since this whole miserable, rotten, heartrending business had even started. But he felt Billy’s hand on his shoulder.

 

“Anyways. We can figure it all out tomorrow. Let’s just go to bed,” Billy said. And Goodnight nodded and they made their way back towards the house. Reaching the steps of the front porch, Goodnight was suddenly struck by the fact that it was their first proper house together. If it had been under any other circumstances he could see himself turning slyly towards Billy before sliding an arm around his back, scooping the man’s legs out from under him, and carrying him over the threshold bridal-style, Billy’s protests and Goodnight’s almost certain backache be damned.

 

But here and now it would have felt like the most cruel thing imaginable. To both of them.

 

Later, when they were settling into bed, Goodnight moved closer towards Billy and they lay there facing each other. He reached out to stroke a line down Billy’s face, his chest constricting at the fact that these seemingly endless times were now so horrifically _limited_.

 

“Billy…” he whispered, unsure of how to broach the subject.

 

But Billy just caught his hand and squeezed it, drawing it to his mouth before kissing Goodnight’s fingertips.

 

“Don’t,” he said quietly back. “Just…I don’t want to talk about it, Goody.”

 

Goodnight brushed his fingers over Billy’s lips, understanding that between the two of them, it was Billy who most certainly needed more time to process this. But for once in their lives, more time was something they _didn’t_ have.

 

“You sure?” he asked uncertainly.

 

Billy looked back at him, face shadowed in the dark room, his eyes and face calm, but the line of his mouth tight, as though it was holding back whatever he might have been feeling. Billy nodded and slid his hand around the back of Goodnight’s head, fingers tangling in his hair and pulling him in to kiss him.

 

It felt nice but it wasn’t the kind of kiss that could continue long and leisurely. Goodnight just felt too cold in his chest and he was sure Billy felt the same way. When they eventually pulled back their eyes were both full of regret.

 

“C’mere,” Billy murmured, and Goodnight shuffled closer to him, wrapping his arm around Billy and letting out a sigh at the press of their bodies, trying to keep every part of them still in contact.

 

“Just try to sleep,” Billy said, fingers stroking through the hairs at the nape of Goodnight’s neck.

 

Goodnight made an unconvincing hum of amusement he didn’t feel. “Don’t really see that happening anytime soon. You?”

 

He felt Billy nod reluctantly, the top of his head brushing against Goodnight’s chin. “I’m pretty tired. Will you –“

 

Goodnight wrapped his arms around him more.

 

“I’m right here. Go to sleep, Billy,” he said. And then the words fully hit him and he felt a rush of grief spring up in him and squeezed his arms tighter around Billy because if he didn’t he would have shook out of his skin. So he kept himself completely still, the grief ripping and ricocheting its way around the inside of his chest, but Goodnight determinedly not letting it pierce through him. He needed to breathe through his mouth because his nose was completely blocked, and sniffing the snot away would have clued Billy in to the fact that Goodnight was silently crying right in front of him. Billy would feel compelled to comfort Goodnight, and Goodnight wouldn’t have been able to handle the dissonance of that at all. It wasn’t him who should be seeking comfort out of all this.

 

So he lay there with Billy tucked into his chest, completely still except for his hand that rubbed over Billy’s back, and the hot tears that leaked silently from his eyes, staining the faded mattress of what was to be their last bed.

 

 

*

 

 

They spent about a week trying to set up the rest of the cabin, but it wasn’t easy. Billy kept throwing himself into the work, which Goodnight could well understand, but Billy just didn’t have the energy to do as much as he wanted. Oh Billy was still every bit as capable as ever, and his dip in energy wasn’t that dramatic yet. The doctor said it would take a few more months at least for him to really feel fatigued. But he just wasn’t up for the more heavy-duty house chores, and they weren’t always things Goodnight could complete alone.

 

There also weren’t as many tools or supplies around the cabin as Goodnight might have hoped, so he found himself riding down the mountain towards the town’s general store to place orders. He’d bring both their horses down, leading Billy’s horse behind him on the way back up, the animal loaded up with supplies from the little town of Pine Rocks. It was a quaint town that received regular supplies from larger lumber towns up the valley, but he hated going into it because it meant spending less time with Billy.

 

But Billy was getting increasingly testy at his inability to contribute as much as he wanted to. Goodnight tried to tell him it was fine, Goodnight could manage, but he knew that wasn’t the heart of the issue at all. It wasn’t the lack of stamina that was frustrating Billy: it was the cause. But he didn’t seem to want to talk about it at all.

 

Goodnight wished he would, but he knew Billy would only talk about it when he was ready. So Goodnight didn’t push, just tried to be there for Billy as much as possible, and tried to make sure Billy was doing alright with the work without coddling the man, which he knew would raise Billy’s hackles like nothing else. Billy could work himself into withdrawn, taciturn states, and not even Goodnight could coax him out of his armour when he got like that. Goodnight had learned from experience that it was best to let it run its course. But it wasn’t like Goodnight was complaining. He’d take Billy’s company at his most snappish than anyone else on the entire unfair planet.

 

And besides. Goodnight had never lacked for imagination, but even he couldn’t imagine how Billy was feeling right now, consumed by something that for once in his life Billy couldn’t control.

 

So they worked all day, doing their best to act normally, but dancing tensely around each other while they worked, and they always wound up in bed tired. Tired physically, and tired by just…everything else.

 

One morning Goodnight woke up hearing a muffled thunking sound above him. He stirred and reached out across the mattress, fingers feeling only smooth linen. He blearily opened his eyes to find the bed empty. Another thunk jolted him and he sat up in bed, suddenly fully awake. His blood ran cold.

 

“Billy,” he whispered, suddenly tasting dread.

 

He pushed open the front door and marched outside in nothing but his flannel pajama bottoms, the early morning dew soaking into the hems, grass tickling his feet. He turned around in front yard and looked up at the high, triangular roof to see Billy perched beside the stone chimney, hammering new shingles into the roof around it. He had a bunch of chimney brushes balancing precariously on the edge of the roof which already looked sooty from use.

 

“Billy!” Goodnight barked up. “The hell do you think you’re doing?”

 

“Fixing the ‘oof,” Billy said, the word muffled by the nails he had placed between his teeth.

 

“I said _I_ would take care of the roof,” Goodnight hollered, heart pounding at the sight of Billy up there, feet balanced on the edge of the roof.

 

“Yeah ‘ell you ‘eren’t,” Billy called back, pulling the nails out of his teeth and hammering one into the roof, turning his ankle slightly for more leverage.

 

“Billy don’t be an idiot,” Goodnight yelled. “Come down from there!”

 

“When I’m done,” Billy shouted back, and Goodnight could see the fight in his eyes even from where Goodnight was standing on the wet grass looking up at him.

 

“No you’re done right now,” Goodnight said loudly.

 

“Oh shut up,” Billy yelled down at him.

 

“ _What_ did you just say to me?” Goodnight yelled, anger and hurt starting to lick against the dread that was building up in him. Billy told him to shut up at least five times a week, but never like he meant it.

 

“You heard me,” Billy said nastily, balancing the hammer against the chimney and reaching for the nail box that balanced on the tip of where the slanting edges of the roof met.

 

“Billy don’t,” Goodnight shouted, a spike of fear suddenly chasing away any irritation that had been building. He felt wings beating overhead, yellow eyes watching him, sharp beak ready to tear into the back of his neck. He heard bullets pinging off church bells, the crack and splinter of wooden ramparts, and felt like he was suddenly tumbling in a freefall.

 

Billy stretched out fingertips brushing against the box.

 

“Billy _stop_ ,” Goodnight yelled. And when Billy’s hand closed around the handle, Goodnight saw his ankle turn beneath him on the edge of the roof, saw Billy give a horrible lurch, and Goodnight’s heart went flying into his throat.

 

“NO!” he screamed, already running. But Billy was tumbling fast down the side of the roof, hair flying in a blur, bouncing off the edge of the roof before plummeting to the ground and landing with a sickening thud. He lay on the grass, face tilted up towards the sky. Completely still.

 

“ _BILLY!_ ”

 

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

 

“I seem to remember telling you to make yourself comfortable. Not to fall off the first roof you come across.”

 

Billy just glared at Doctor Black. But the effect was reduced somewhat by a wince as he leaned forward in the bed so she could continue to wrap bandages around his bare torso which was steadily mottling into a ghastly shade of blue.

 

“It’s unbelievable,” said Doctor Black. “That you didn’t break any ribs, that is. You’ve bruised the hell out of them, but the fact that none of them broke and pierced an organ? You wouldn’t have survived that. You’re very lucky you know. Very lucky indeed.”

 

“Yeah,” Billy spat out. “Lucky. Sure.”

 

Goodnight ran a hand over his mouth from where he was watching by the bedroom wall, staying out of the way as the doctor tended to Billy. His heart rate was only just now starting to slow down, and now that the fog of panic had lifted he could see how well and truly irate Billy was.

 

Billy had always had a bit of a hot streak, one that had surprised the hell out of Goodnight the first time he’d ever seen it. Normally it was over the most innocuous things imaginable. Like the time they travelled for a few days with a somewhat disagreeable cowboy who had dumped his bag in the spot where Billy had been planning to sit. Billy had just calmly picked up the man’s bag and flung it clear across the campsite before sitting down in his spot. Or the time Goodnight had beat him at jacks, Billy staring in open disbelief when Goodnight had snatched up more of the pronged metal pieces before the rubber ball could hit the ground again. Billy had just gotten up fuming and walked over to the nearest tree to throw knives into it. Secretly Goodnight had always found Billy’s occasional temper to be hopelessly delightful, the sight of Billy’s feathers being ruffled more endearing than the man probably wanted them to be.

 

But those were just Billy’s occasional outbursts: more a sign of his various idiosyncrasies coming through as opposed to actual anger. Billy’s _real_ temper? It didn’t happen very often. But when he was furious, Billy Rocks could be a twenty-four carat son of a bitch. His temper would flare up and burn whoever was closest with the speed and force of a brushfire, and Goodnight wanted to get the doctor out of there so that she wouldn’t be on the receiving end of it.

 

“Yes lucky,” Doctor Black reiterated, not cowed in the slightest, tying off the end of the long bandage that bound Billy’s chest. She stepped back, smoothing a white hair back into her bun. “Now take the painkillers as needed, and in the meantime can you try not to be too idiotic about what chores you take on?”

 

Billy’s nostrils flared and he opened his mouth and Goodnight stepped forward.

 

“Thank you, doctor,” he said, taking her elbow and leading her out of the bedroom and back to her horse outside. She gave him a bit of a sympathetic look as she got back on her horse. For an elderly woman she rode well. And Goodnight knew that first hand. After Billy had regained consciousness, Goodnight had made sure all of his reflexes were working to make sure Billy hadn’t broken his spine before he carried him back inside, praying desperately that the bruises already forming were just from Billy’s new sensitivity and not from any internal bleeding. And then Goodnight had thrown a jacket over his sleepwear and ridden down the mountain as fast as his horse could possibly gallop to go bang on the doctor’s front door and urge her out to ride back up the mountain.

 

It was by far the scariest ride of Goodnight’s life. Riding back into Rose Creek had nothing on riding up a mountain with the doctor galloping behind him, digging in his spurs until his horse was wheezing, and praying all the while that Billy hadn’t died while he was gone.

 

“He’s not the only one who takes it angrily,” Doctor Black said before giving her black horse a nudge with her foot, and setting back down the mountain at a trot.

 

Goodnight sighed and went back inside. He could see how angry Billy was himself. He’d been angry all week, even though he’d been trying to tamp it down. He’d been angry up on the roof, smacking nails into it like he had something to prove. And now that he’d injured himself he was probably doubly worked up, rage mingled with embarrassment. This was not going to be good.

 

Goodnight stepped back into the bedroom to see Billy glowering at him.

 

“Did you hear what she called me?” he said.

 

“Yes,” Goodnight said shortly, pouring Billy a glass of water from the pitcher he’d set up by the bed while the doctor was tending to Billy.

 

“She called me an idiot, Goody,” he hissed.

 

Goodnight just nodded, leaving the water there on the bedside table. Billy didn’t touch it, a muscle ticking in his jaw.

 

“An _idiot_ ,” he repeated, looking up at Goodnight with his eyes narrowed.

 

“Yes thank you, I have ears,” Goodnight said tiredly, turning around to face the wall, his hands in his pockets.

 

“Oh what?” Billy asked, needling him. “Do you agree with her or something?”

 

Goodnight shut his eyes, pained. _Don’t do this, Billy,_ he thought. He knew what Billy was doing. It’s why he’d been up on the roof in the first place: trying to pick a fight with Goodnight and hoping Goodnight would take the bait. But even falling off a roof hadn’t knocked the fight out of Billy. It had just made it worse.

 

“Well do you agree with her or not?” Billy said snippily to Goodnight’s back.

 

Goodnight’s mouth trembled as he faced the wall. He _didn’t_ want to do this. They had what felt like so little time left…Goodnight wanted to spend it holding Billy, trying to make him laugh, trying to make him as comfortable as possible. Not _fighting_ with the one person he loved more than anything else in the entire world, the person he wished desperately that he could switch places with.

 

But that was what Goodnight needed. What _Billy_ needed was to let his rage out, and right now Goodnight was the only one there to lance that boil.

 

“ _Do you?_ ” Billy shot out, still looking for a fight. And Goodnight would give it to him, however much it killed him inside to do it. So he took in a breath and plastered a nasty look onto his face as he turned around to glare at Billy. And Goodnight said the most unselfish thing he could possibly say in that moment:

 

“Yes. You were being a _fucking_ idiot, Billy Rocks.”

 

Billy clenched his fists, and Goodnight thought he saw a flash of triumph in Billy’s eyes before he squared his shoulders and hurled it right back.

 

“Yeah? Well you were being an idiot avoiding that roof for so long. I knew you didn’t want to go up there so excuse me for trying to _help_.”

 

“The only thing you were trying to do was give me a heart attack,” Goodnight shot back.

 

“Oh wow a heart attack, that sounds terrifying, I’m _so_ fucking sorry for you, Goodnight,” Billy spat out. “A death you _can’t_ see coming from miles away? That sounds _awful_.”

 

“Yeah well you know what I _wouldn’t_ do if I could see it coming?” Goodnight said, stalking around the edge of the bed. “I wouldn’t be climbing up on roofs while I’m sick, and trying to break my fool neck.”

 

“You wouldn’t be climbing up them anyways,” Billy said with a sneer. “You can barely climb a tree anymore, you’re so fucking scared of heights. Next you’ll be crying to me about how you’re too scared to climb up on your goddamn _horse_.”

 

Billy Rocks. Twenty-four carat son of a bitch.

 

Goodnight’s chest twisted, because Billy had never _once_ in their lives ever tried to use Goodnight’s fear as ammunition in an argument. Had never once tried to make Goodnight feel ashamed for all the many many ways Goodnight was a wreck of a human being.

 

Goodnight wasn’t hurt by what Billy was saying. He was just hurt that Billy felt so awful that he wanted to say it at _all_.

 

“What, you’ve got nothing to say to me?” Billy taunted him. “You? _Nothing?”_

_You don’t have to do this, Billy_ , Goodnight thought desperately. Except he knew Billy did have to. So he took his hands out of his pockets and tried to put on the most menacing face he could.

 

“Oh what, _now_ you want to talk?” Goodnight said. “Mister ‘Everything Is Normal’ suddenly wants to talk, is that it?”

 

Billy opened his mouth and Goodnight steamrollered him:

 

“No you don’t get to talk now. I don’t have to listen to a word out of anyone who acted as _stupidly_ as you just did. Christ’s sake, Billy, what the hell got _into_ you?”

 

Billy leaned forward where he was kneeling on the mattress, hair flying out of his bun, eyes glinting furiously at Goodnight.

 

“Nothing got into me,” he snarled. “I was helping _you_.”

 

“And some help you are now,” Goodnight scoffed, gesturing to Billy’s banged-up form on the mattress. “You think you’re at all helpful to me like this? Practically killing yourself?”

 

“Why not?” Billy laughed unpleasantly. “Gonna die anyways, what the hell’s the difference?”

 

“Oh I’ll tell you what the difference is,” Goodnight said, raising his voice, partly to rile Billy up, and partly because it he didn’t his voice would probably crack.

 

“Oh please do,” said Billy sarcastically.

 

“The _difference_ is that now I can’t leave you alone for five seconds, because you’re incapable of behaving like a rational human being. Good lord, man, I didn’t know you were capable of such an idiotic decision.”

 

“Well at least it _is_ my decision,” Billy said colouring, finally starting to raise his voice. “Nothing else has been my decision lately! So I’m sorry if I want to _choose_ something for once!”

 

“Well not anymore,” Goodnight said, pointing a finger at him, which he willed not to shake. “You are not going set up a single thing around here until I’m convinced you can do it without breaking your neck and scaring me half to death in the process.”

 

“Oh I’m not, am I?” Billy said, his voice dropping dangerously, and now Goodnight knew what would work in setting him off, feeling sick when he realized what Billy wanted to hear.

 

“That’s right, you heard me,” Goodnight said narrowing his eyes. “I’m not about to let you use this as an excuse to act like a complete fool.”

 

“Let me?” Billy snarled. “ _Let_ me? Just who the fuck do you think you _are_?”

 

 _The man who loves you no matter what I’m about to say to you,_ Goodnight thought in agony and almost wanted to say out loud, but Billy wasn’t there yet, his steam still rising close to the lid, making it shake before the top blew off. Goodnight drew himself up to his full height and looked down at Billy.

 

“I’m the one who decides what it is you’re going to do, and I’m starting with climbing up on goddamn _roofs_! You understand me, Billy?” Goodnight barked out. “I forbid you!”

 

Billy’s face went almost purple as he raised his hackles, trembling in rage, eyes flashing wildly.

 

“YOU _FORBID_ ME?” he screamed out, his normally calm face contorted in fury. “YOU FORBID ME? YOU DON’T FORBID ME SHIT, GOODNIGHT!” And there it was, all the anger, all the hopelessness, all the grief and fear, and all the rage finally bursting out of him.

 

“JUST GET OUT,” he yelled out at Goodnight, fists clenched. “GET OUT!”

 

“I WILL,” Goodnight shouted back, relief and heartache mingling together. But he wasn’t leaving fast enough for Billy.

 

“OUT,” Billy hollered again, lashing his arm out at Goodnight like he was throwing a knife at him. But then tears suddenly sprung to his eyes and he gasped in pain, doubling over and clutching his bruised ribs.

 

“Billy?” Goodnight said alarmed, any pretense of fight he’d had immediately dropping. He took a step towards the bed. “Billy are you –“

 

“Get. Out.”

 

Billy wouldn’t even raise his head, just sat there, clutching his side, shaking in both rage and pain, ready to bite off any hand placed on him, refusing to look at Goody. So Goodnight tore himself away, left the bedroom, and walked out to the back porch, the door swinging behind him just in time for him to let out a keening, shuddering gasp.

 

“Billy,” he moaned, hands covering his face. He took in a shaking breath and walked down to the lake, trying to hold back his tears until he was at least out of earshot from the cabin. Blindly he hung a left before the grass dipped down abruptly into the pebbly beach that led to the lake, water lapping against the rocks. He walked until he reached a cluster of birch trees and he leaned his head against one, running his hand down the smooth, papery bark. He took hold of a strip and pulled, tearing it away from the tree, biting his lip. He let go and the bark sprang back up in a spiral.

 

He turned around and sunk helplessly to the ground, his back against the tree, facing the sun which hung over the lake, casting the ripples of the water in orange. He heard a far-off loon call out a single quavering note.

 

Goodnight’s lip trembled. And then he was burying his face back into his hands, letting out a sob.

 

“Oh God,” Goodnight gasped out, unsure whether he was using the word as an exclamation, or if he was using it as a name, calling out a plea for help. His shoulders shook violently as he let out a few more sobs, and once the first spams of grief were worked out he bent over beneath the tree and wept his heart out.

 

By the time he could lift his head again the sun was hanging lower in the sky, and he straightened up, walking over to the lake to splash cool water on his face. He didn’t want Billy to see him like this. He knew at this stage Billy would be full of guilt and regret for shouting at Goody. Billy shouldn’t have to feel worse when faced with Goodnight’s grief, even though it wasn’t Billy shouting at him that Goodnight was upset about.

 

Goodnight walked slowly back to the cabin, trying to draw out his steps, calm himself down, hoping for the red to fade from his eyes. If he could get to the cabin and into the main living area without Billy seeing him, then he could stay there, make some food, loud enough to let Billy know he was there, and then Billy could come out when he was ready to. And if he didn’t come out, still didn’t want to see Goodnight, well, the couch in the living room was big enough for Goodnight.

 

But when Goodnight approached the cabin he saw Billy’s figure sitting there huddled on the steps of the back porch, still shirtless but with a blanket falling off his shoulders, bandages a stark white against his bronze skin. When Goodnight drew closer he saw Billy was shivering as he sat there waiting for Goodnight.

 

“Oh Billy,” Goodnight whispered, walking the few last steps towards him immediately.

 

Billy clutched miserably at the slipping blanket with one hand. Goodnight bent down to pull it gently back over Billy’s shoulders, seeing that Billy’s eyes were red. He arranged the blanket properly around Billy, and before he could pull away, Billy’s hand flew up to clutch Goodnight’s wrist.

 

“Goody?” Billy asked hoarsely, sliding his hand down Goodnight’s wrist, placing it tentatively over Goodnight’s hand like he wasn’t sure if Goodnight still wanted it there. And if Goodnight hadn’t already been completely cried out, that simple hesitant motion would have caused him to crack right there.

 

“I’m right here, sweetheart,” Goodnight said gently, sitting on the steps beside him, wrapping one arm around him, and threading their fingers together. “Right here.”

 

Billy’s lip wobbled and he let out a keening sound. And then he was leaning forward and burying his face into Goodnight’s lap, letting out a harsh sob. Goodnight just slid his arms around him fully and let him cry, Goodnight slowly rocking him, murmuring into his hair, his heart _aching_ for Billy the entire while.

 

Eventually Billy’s sobs turned into choked cries, the last of his tears working their way out into Goodnight’s lap. He let out a few shuddering whimpers, Goodnight stroking his hair. Finally Billy managed to lift his head with enormous effort, resting it against Goodnight’s chest for a minute, before fully lifting his face to Goodnight. It was streaked with tears, his nose was running, his skin was flushed, and Goodnight didn’t think he had ever loved him more.

 

“I’m sorry,” Billy gasped out. “I’m so sorry, Goodnight, I’m so sorry, I’m –”

 

“Shhh shhh.” Goodnight murmured. He shook his head and pulled Billy closer to him, running a hand down his back, tears pricking at the back of his eyes again.

 

“ _I’m_ sorry,” Goodnight managed to get out, his throat feeling thick. “You have no idea how sorry I am this is happening to you.”

 

“I was awful to you,” Billy whispered. “I can’t believe how awful I was.”

 

“Billy _this_ is awful,” Goodnight said, gesturing to encompass everything that had happened in the past few weeks. “There’s nothing about all of this that isn’t awful.”

 

Billy let out a shaky breath.

 

“I wanted to fight you,” he said, fresh tears springing to his eyes at the admittance. “I couldn’t fight this so I – I wanted to fight you instead,” he said, voice catching on the last word.

 

“I know,” Goodnight murmured, stroking his hair. Billy didn’t have to explain. Goodnight knew him better than anyone. “I know. And I’ll do it every day if you want me to.”

 

Billy shook his head, lips trembling again. “I don’t. I really really don’t, oh god, Goody, I don’t want to fight you, I love you, I love you _so_ much, I’m so sorry –“

 

His voice broke and Goodnight wrapped his arms back around Billy fully, tears spilling out the corners of Goodnight’s eyes, even though he’d been sure he had none left.

 

“I love you no matter _what_ , Billy Rocks,” Goodnight said fiercely in a hoarse voice. “I loved you this morning, I’ll love you tomorrow, and I love you right now. Whether we have a week left, or a month, or a year, or forever, there’s not one _minute_ of it I won’t spend loving you.”

 

Billy let out a sound that was practically a whimper, and Goodnight pressed his mouth to Billy’s ear:

 

“It would take a lot more than death to stop me from loving you. You hear me?”

 

He felt Billy nod and reach for his hand again, squeezing it tight.

 

Goodnight pressed desperate kisses to his hair, and when Billy lifted his face to him, Goodnight didn’t hold back, just leaned in and kissed Billy’s mouth, harder than he’d meant to. But Billy immediately kissed him back fiercely, tangling his hands in Goodnight’s hair, thumbs digging into Goody’s jaw. It was messy and desperate, but however awful both of them felt Goodnight finally felt a glimmer of their normal spark again. The spark that had always burned between them brighter than the sun, creating a pull between them, twin stars, both of them locked and circling their orbits like two shining rings, forever linked.

 

They drew back, eyes and lips and hearts burning, foreheads still touching, still unable to separate completely.

 

Goodnight stroked a hand over Billy’s jaw, Billy pressing a kiss to his palm. And then Goodnight drew Billy against his side, and leaning together they turned their heads to watch the sun set slowly over the lake.

 

“Will you talk to me?” Billy whispered, sliding a hand over Goodnight’s knee.

 

Goodnight rubbed his head against Billy’s, a nuzzle and a nod.

 

“About what?”

 

“Anything,” Billy said, a smile starting to colour his voice a little. “Tell me a story?”

 

Goodnight’s heart burned both painful and warm. He adjusted his arms around Billy.

 

“Well let’s see,” he murmured. “I ever tell you the one about the –“

He continued to talk for Billy, exaggerating some parts, flat-out lying in others just to make Billy laugh. And he talked until the sun sank lower and lower over the lake, finally dipping behind the purple mountains, colouring the horizon with pinks, and golds and blues, streaking the sky until the last shimmering lights were pulled behind the peaks, and stars began to dot the sky.

 

It was dark and the crickets were ringing out when Billy tucked himself closer to Goodnight.

 

“M’cold,” he mumbled, and Goodnight pressed a kiss to his forehead, standing up and pulling Billy with him.

 

“Well then why don’t we see about testing out that fireplace?” Goodnight said as they turned arm-in-arm around towards the house. Suddenly he paused.

 

“I don’t suppose you managed to clean out the chimney _before_ you decided to start doing acrobatics up there, did you?

 

Before he could worry about whether that was too much too soon, Billy was throwing his head back and letting out a laugh. Goodnight grinned when he heard it.

 

“As a matter of fact I did,” Billy finally said, sounding somewhat sheepish, but mirth written into every word.

 

Goodnight’s grin deepened as he tightened his grip around Billy’s shoulders.

 

“Billy Rocks, sometimes you can be a goddamn genius.”

 

And they walked back into the cabin, still pressed together, the door swinging shut behind them.

 

 

 

 


	2. Vasquez

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Deus Ex Vasquina

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Warning for mild gore in the context of a nightmare in this chapter. But other than that this chapter is pretty upbeat. HOPE YOU ENJOY.)

 

 

The thing about setting up house is that it’s not so much fun when the house is doubling as a crypt. And Goodnight didn’t want to think of it that way but it was hard to put a lot of heart into a place when it was only meant to be a final resting place.

 

Harder still when it was just him doing the work. He’d let Billy assist only with the very lightest of tasks, but Billy was still quite sore from his tumble off the roof, his torso bruised black and blue all over. Vigorous motion was absolutely out of the question but at least Billy seemed to accept that. After the incident with the roof, Goodnight had brought it up with Billy again later that night in bed, trying not to make his plea sound as desperate as he felt:

 

“Of _course_ I don’t ‘forbid’ you from doing anything,” he’d said quietly, trailing a line down Billy’s jaw with his finger, still feeling horrible about the wording he’d chosen, knowing that’s what Billy had needed to lash out at. “I don’t want you to think you have to lie in bed all day, and I’m _not_ trying to make you an invalid. That’s the last thing I want. But Billy… _please_ just…don’t be reckless?”

 

Goodnight had swallowed and added: “I just don’t want to lose you before I have to.”

 

He didn’t say what he was thinking, which was: _I don’t want to lose you at all._ Because that wasn’t something either of them could help.

Billy had just nodded, running a hand down Goodnight’s chest. “I promise,” he said, still full of regret at having tried to be the cause of Goodnight’s fear, when Goodnight’s fear was something Billy had always considered himself to be a shelter for.

 

So Goodnight did most of the work and he did his best because the alternative was Billy being uncomfortable while they stayed here. But he knew his best wasn’t good enough. Goodnight was no stranger to relying on resourcefulness while they were on the road, but they didn’t tend to ever stay in proper houses that long and Goodnight was unfamiliar with things like cleaning out the wooden gutters, or sealing up cracks in the walls of the log house. They’d stayed in campsites, saloons, backrooms of shops, or hotels sometimes for weeks at a time if they found a promising work opportunity in a city. But they weren’t used to having a house for just the two of them, and certainly not one that they had to set up themselves.

 

And it was also hard to tear himself away from Billy. Anytime he got up in the morning with some necessary chore or project in mind, Billy would hook his leg around Goodnight and pull him back in for long, lazy explorations of each other, as though they had all the time in the world. Sometimes Billy would take them both in hand, both of them already stiff from the arousal of the morning and they would slide damply together. Sometimes Goodnight would shimmy down the length of Billy’s banged up chest, pressing ginger kisses to the bruises that were fading to yellow, and ducking his head to slide his mouth over Billy, sucking him off slowly for as long as Billy could take it. How long Goodnight could do it wasn’t even a factor. Goodnight had long considered this to be one of his favourite things on earth: slotted between Billy’s legs, tongue running over Billy from root to tip, Billy’s entire length sliding deep into Goodnight’s mouth, his thighs propped up on Goody’s shoulders, the tautness of his muscles, the heaving of his chest, and his breathless moans of Goodnight’s name a symphony that Goodnight never tired of conducting.

 

There were a limited number of things they could do while Billy was still so bruised all over but that was fine because most of the time when Billy pulled Goodnight back into bed it was to just run his eyes and fingers over him, cataloging him, breathing him in, trying to hold Goodnight in his lungs like he was the smoke from one of their cigarettes.

 

And Goodnight looked _back_ , trying to take in every last detail of the sweep of Billy’s eyelashes, the soft wide mouth that knew every last part of Goodnight, and placing his palm up against Billy’s, their fingers splayed out in a fan, Billy’s hands just a bit broader, big enough to hold Goodnight’s entire soul in them.

 

Sometimes even just looking was too much for Goodnight though. One morning Goodnight was outside in the front of the house, chopping down a tree, having realized they were going to have to start stockpiling firewood soon. He was making a decent job of it, but the repeated motions of swinging the axe were so different from holding up a rifle and it was pulling his arm muscles in ways he wasn’t used to. He went inside to fetch some water when he glimpsed Billy through the half-open door of their bedroom.

 

Billy wasn’t doing anything extraordinary. Just sitting cross-legged on the mattress in loose clothes, hair pulled up and out of his face, and carefully sharpening his knives. And he looked so _peaceful_. He was bathed in the sunlight that was streaming in through the window, the rays of light glinting off his blades creating tiny rainbows in the silver ripples while Billy quietly ran a cloth over them. It was a sight Goodnight had seen a million times before. But it suddenly struck him how even in this simple habit, Billy still managed to be the most extraordinary thing Goodnight had ever seen in his life. And even though Goodnight was already panting from exertion, something about the sight knocked him absolutely breathless.

 

Swallowing down around the lump in his throat, Goodnight backed quietly away so as not to disturb Billy looking so serene and content. He went back outside with his head spinning, sucking in the fresh air, walking back over to the newest tree he was felling, leaning against it in a bit of a daze.

 

Fall had come to the mountain, and while the leaves were still mostly on the trees they were a cluster of reds, ambers, bright yellows, and deep oranges, all of them rustling together, one occasionally lifting off to float slowly in a spiral, down to where Goodnight stood beneath them. And for a few quiet moments he allowed himself to just breathe.

 

He felt so lightheaded he almost didn’t hear the approach of hooves. He squinted though the pines and wondered if it would be Doctor Black or someone from the town’s general store delivering supplies, the only people who really had any reason to come up to where they were.

 

“Hello? You the man staying here?” a voice called out. Goodnight noted the thick rolling accent with surprise, something about it pinging off Goodnight’s memory like a bell.

 

“Yeah just a second,” he called out, picking up the axe and swinging it into the bark of the tree to leave there as he came around to the clearing in front of the house.

 

The man swung down off his horse with a rangy loping grace, straightening up to his full height. But it was his voice Goodnight recognized first as he said:

 

“Got a package here from a Doctor Black. I was riding through town and she asked me to bring it up to the man staying here.” The man reached into one of his saddlebags.

 

Goodnight stared at him in absolute disbelief.

 

“Vasquez?” Goodnight said in a strangled voice.

 

The man looked up with his brow furrowed as he looked at Goodnight properly. And then his eyebrows shot all the way up the brim of the black hat he wore, dark-bearded jaw dropping open.

 

“ _Robicheaux?”_ Vasquez said in outright shock, looking just as stunned as Goodnight felt.

 

They stood there gaping at one another.

 

“I –“

 

“You –“

 

“ _You’re_ the guy staying up here?”

 

“What are _you_ doing here?”

 

“Passing through and I –“

 

Vasquez stopped talking and looked at Goodnight properly, letting out a laugh.

 

“Holy _shit,_ hermano,” he hooted, breaking out into a huge grin throwing up his hands helplessly and Goodnight laughed in disbelief, and they stepped forward into a loose impulsive hug that was slightly awkward but still nice as they slapped each other’s shoulders a few times. Goodnight hadn’t had _that_ many conversations with the man back in Rose Creek but he’d certainly been easy company, easier than some of the others. In fact, after Billy and Sam, Goodnight probably would have chosen Vasquez next as someone to casually chat with. For all the man’s high-wiredness he’d been very easygoing. And even though the first time they’d ever spoken had been Goodnight bringing up what should have been old blood feuds, Goodnight hadn’t gotten the sense that Vasquez had been particularly bothered: just amused.

 

They stepped back, Vasquez’s eyes crinkling a little. There were certain things you couldn’t live through with people without hugging them on sight, and Goodnight supposed Rose Creek counted as one of those things.

 

“So like I said…” Goodnight said with another laugh of shock. “What the absolute _hell_ are you doing here?”

 

“I’ve been in the New Mexico territories,” Vasquez said, pronouncing it ‘Me-hee-co’. “You’re not too far from them you know, maybe just a week’s ride once you’re out of the mountains.”

 

“You don’t say,” Goodnight said, turning his head to look down the road Vasquez had come on.

 

“Had to stop by the doctor to get some supplies, and – hey you know this town’s got a lady doctor?” Vasquez asked suddenly, sounding both incredulous and delighted at the same time.

 

“I am aware,” Goodnight said smiling a little, still knocked for a loop at the dissonance of hearing the still-cheery Spanish accent bubbling up there on the mountain.

 

“Well she asked me if I could save her a trip and ride up here with this,” Vasquez said, throwing a rattling package at Goodnight which he caught, knowing it was more painkillers for Billy.

 

“Can’t believe she was trusting me with her packages just like that,” Vasquez snorted, shaking his head, but doing it with what looked like regard.

 

Goodnight placed the bundle in his pockets. “Yeah she’s an interesting lady.”

 

“She told me the man up here was a Cajun who talks like he’s worried someone will understand him, but she didn’t say it was _you_ ,” Vasquez said with a knife-like grin, reaching out to shove Goodnight’s shoulder. “Guess I should have put two and two together though, _s_ _í_?”

 

“Shut up,” Goodnight said laughing, swatting Vasquez’s hand away.

 

“Hey speaking of two and two together, where’s Billy?” Vasquez asked, his eyes lighting up.

 

And it was just the _way_ he said it: so certain and expectant that wherever Goodnight went Billy would go too. And it caused a wave of agony to rush up through Goodnight where he stood. He felt his lip tremble and to his absolute _horror_ Goodnight crumpled.

 

“Oh god,” he gasped out, hand flying up over his mouth to keep in the sob that wanted to come out, looking at the ground which had suddenly become blurred by tears. “Sorry, sorry.”

 

“Hey hey hey…” Goodnight felt Vasquez’s hand hesitantly on his shoulder, Vasquez sounding surprised but keeping his voice to a low murmur. “What’s wrong?” A note of unease suddenly crept into his voice as he asked: “Is it Billy? Did he…”

 

Goodnight took in a shuddering breath as he shook his head, swallowed hard and looked back up, blinking rapidly.

 

“He’s…he’s inside,” Goodnight said hoarsely, clearing his throat. He jerked his head to the side, wiping his eyes, pulling himself together. “Come on.”

 

Vasquez walked behind him to the house, stopping to tie his horse up at the stable, and following Goodnight up the steps.

 

“Hey Billy,” Goodnight called out walking over to the bedroom where Billy was still tending to his knives. Goodnight did his best to inject some cheer into his voice again. “You’ve got a visitor.”

 

Billy frowned in confusion, still looking down as he arranged his knives on the clean towel spread across the bed. Goodnight stepped back to look at Vasquez who was hanging back, and gestured towards the open bedroom door.

 

Vasquez stepped into view, smiling as he looked at Billy who still hadn’t glanced up yet.

 

“Hey, _Cuchillo_ ,” he said in a teasing voice. “You know you could take someone’s eye out with those things?”

 

Billy stilled as he stared down at his array of knives. A slow smile spread over his face where he was sitting.

 

“Only if I’m trying.”

 

Vasquez grinned harder as he untied the bandana around his neck, flinging it out to the side like a matador where it floated in the air. And quick as a flash Billy’s head snapped up with his hand whipping out, sending a knife flying through the bandana and pinning it to the wall with a thwack.

 

Both burst out laughing immediately and Goodnight stared nonplussed before realizing this was some inside joke. Goodnight knew that Billy had gotten along very well with the man while they were in the town. It generally took Billy longer than a week to ease up with people they met on the road, but maybe it was the circumstances feeling so final, maybe it was that they were the only two not American-born, or maybe it was simply that they were both relatively solid personalities. Whatever it was, Goodnight had seen Billy and Vasquez chatting quite a bit whenever Sam had paired them up for work, surprised but also pleased by it. Goodnight tended to court company more when they traveled so it was nice to see Billy clicking easily with someone, even if the odds were against the company lasting.

 

Goodnight left them to it and wandered over to the kitchen where he started to make some coffee, pouring himself a cup, sitting down at the table and breathing in the bitter spirals of steam. It helped to clear his head which still felt a little stuffy from the way he’d teared up before.

 

A while later Vasquez came back out of the room, ambling over to the kitchen, looking somewhat dazed. Goodnight nodded and stood up, pouring an extra cup for Vasquez. He paused for a minute and then reached for the bottle of bourbon on the counter, adding a splash to both their cups and sliding one over to Vasquez who sat down.

 

They drank silently for a few minutes until Vasquez cleared his throat.

 

“So how long?” he asked gruffly. Goodnight didn’t know if he meant how long they’d known, or how long Billy had left, but Goodnight was betting on the latter.

 

“Next spring. Maybe summer.”

 

Vasquez nodded, taking a sip of spiked coffee.

 

“I’m very sorry, Goodnight,” he said in a low voice.

 

Goodnight was surprised to find himself appreciating the gesture. He could still remember his Daddy’s funeral, short in the way that Catholic funeral services tended to be, so brief they were almost abrupt. But the gathering at the house afterwards had been a long and unbearable affair. People couldn’t stop crowding around him offering their sympathies, uncles slapping him on the back in a way that jolted him, aunts pinching his cheeks and reeking of perfume, the crush of people leaving him gasping, too short of breath to respond to the endless stream of automatic condolences.

 

But here in the relative seclusion of the mountain and away from normal society, Vasquez’s sympathies were just about the only ones he’d gotten so far. And they rang out sincerely.

 

“Thank you,” Goodnight said quietly, and they continued to drink in silence.

 

“You’ll stay to dinner of course?” Goodnight asked finally, once they’d finished, reverting instinctively to his ingrained manners.

 

Vasquez’s lip twitched up, almost like he wanted to laugh at Goodnight’s courtly graces still holding up, even over a wobbling wooden table.

 

“I’d appreciate it, _hombre_ ,” he said.

 

“Sure,” Goodnight said nodding, standing up, about to reach for Vasquez’s cup. He paused.

 

“Look, I’m…sorry about before,” he said, waving loosely towards the front yard where’d practically fallen apart on Vasquez.

 

Vasquez immediately waved it off, making a _pshht_ sound.

 

“Please. I’m Mexican. We’re emotional people.”

 

Goodnight snorted and Vasquez smiled slightly. And then Billy was walking over towards them and Vasquez’s smile grew.

 

“Hey _Cuchillo_ , apparently I’m staying to dinner so you’d better be the one cooking. I still haven’t forgotten about the time this one cooked grits. Practically broke my spoon.”

 

Billy laughed and Goodnight made a sound of protest, but a very weak one. Billy looked so much like his normal self.

 

Billy cooked some fish he’d caught in the lake that morning with one of the fishing rods he and Goodnight had found weeks ago in the cabin’s shed. They’d needed restringing, but once Billy had oiled up the rusted reel he’d taken to spending time down by the lake, hook dangling in the water, enjoying the peacefulness of it, Goodnight lying on the dock beside him. Billy would keep one hand resting gently on Goodnight’s head, idly working his fingers through Goody’s hair until Goodnight was practically purring, Billy only removing his hand when he got a bite.

 

Billy and Vasquez chatted while they ate, Goodnight occasionally jumping in but mostly just watching them, content to be the third wheel for once. It was normally Goodnight who did all the socializing when they came across others on the road. Sometimes Goodnight felt guilty about it, but Billy had always insisted he never felt neglected watching Goodnight talk at length with other people. And watching Billy with Vasquez, Goodnight could kind of see what he meant. Seeing all of Billy’s quirks and charms on display for someone else meant that Goodnight could just sit back and enjoy watching him.

 

They talked about Rose Creek and the people they’d met, the ones who’d made it and the ones who hadn’t. Goodnight hadn’t gotten to know Horne all that well but it had been interesting to see the legend in the flesh. The very impressive amount of flesh. Faraday had called him a bear, but hell if that bear hadn’t been as quick on his feet as a squirrel.

 

And Faraday himself…despite a promising first meeting Goodnight had never been able to fully relax around the man again, not after Faraday had seen right through him. He’d been an engaging presence to be sure, but the same way fire was engaging until it burned you.

 

But if Faraday was fire then the way he’d gone out had been a blaze of glory, sure enough. And the rush of elation Goodnight had felt after clearing the way for him was the last thing he remembered before he’d been pummeled by hot lead, crashing down the roof of the church, ground rushing up to meet him. He’d been sorry to hear what had happened to him but…Goodnight had also ridden somewhere that day fully expecting to die, but spurred on by the certainty and elation of it being the right thing to do. Even if he _had_ died, he wouldn’t have regretted coming back. And he was certain Faraday didn’t regret his last ride either.

 

Vasquez didn’t seem too inclined to talk about their fallen companions at all, so Goodnight asked about the ones who’d made it out. Goodnight and Billy had needed to spend some substantial time recuperating in the town. And once they were sure Goodnight and Billy would pull through, Sam, Vasquez, and Red Harvest had all taken off into the sunset.

 

“Red,” Vasquez said chuckling, shaking his head. “Still can’t believe the number he pulled on all of us. Acting like he was so serious and silent. He had everyone fooled even more than _you_ did, _Cuchillo_ ,” he said, directing that to Billy.

 

“You seen him since?” Billy asked, smirking around a mouthful of fish and topping off Vasquez’s drink for him.

 

“Nah he stayed with us one night on the road and took off the next day. I’d _like_ to have seen him again but I really don’t know where he went. I guess it makes sense though. None of us really knew where he came from in the first place.”

 

“And Sam?” Goodnight chimed in, noting Vasquez’s use of ‘us’.

 

It turned out Vasquez had ended up riding with Sam for a couple months after they’d ridden off. But Vasquez didn’t have much to say about that either so Goodnight switched subjects.

 

They chatted for a long time over the kitchen table, the sky outside the window getting darker, Goodnight lighting up a lantern at one point which flickered on the table around them. Billy was in good spirits but eventually he’d gotten fatigued. When he did it often came on in a rush. He stood up, wobbling a little, shaking his head at Goodnight who’d half-risen in his seat to help him to bed.

 

“I’m fine,” he said yawning. “Should sleep though.”

 

Before he turned away he clapped Vasquez on the shoulder. “See you tomorrow.”

 

He cut across the living room and went into the bedroom, closing the door behind him. Goodnight and Vasquez looked at each other amused.

 

“Guess you’re staying over then,” Goodnight said, huffing out a laugh.

 

“Hey, he’s the boss,” Vasquez said. And then he suddenly looked thoughtful. “You should have heard him the morning of.”

 

Goodnight realized he meant the morning of Bogue’s army approaching and felt a twist of guilt. Yes he _should_ have seen Billy the morning of. But better late than never. And better late than never again.

 

“Sam had gone out just before dawn. To confirm which way Bogue was coming from,” Vasquez said taking a sip of whiskey. “And while he was gone there was a good few minutes where I genuinely thought everyone was going to lose their minds, _hermano_.”

 

Vasquez shook his head, his dark eyes snapping up to Goodnight, the lantern light flickering in them.

 

“You know when people are so scared you can practically smell it coming off of them? And the scent just drives everyone else that little bit more crazy? And there’s that devil in everyone, itching and scratching and trying to claw its way out of you… but every time you try to take a breath there’s just someone else’s fear in the air. And you breathe that fear in and the devil eats it right up, getting stronger with every breath until you can’t breathe around him at all. You know?”

 

Goodnight nodded quietly. Because Vasquez had just described the chaos of war exactly. It might have been twenty years but Goodnight still carried it with him like it was yesterday.

 

“I thought everything was going to fall apart before it even started. If even one person had screamed it would have been panic. Chain reaction. But then Billy…he stepped in. Started ordering everyone around without breaking a sweat. Telling everyone exactly what they should be doing, checking that everyone knew where they were going and making sure they got there, taking care of everyone until they could do it themselves again.” Vasquez’s lip quirked. “I think it was the first time a lot of the townspeople had even heard him speak. But believe me when I say they fucking listened.”

 

Vasquez looked straight at Goodnight who was spellbound, the first time he’d heard any of this.

 

“You know, it might have taken the seven of us to save that town,” Vasquez said, with a nod that showed he was clearly including Goodnight in that statement. “But I’m pretty sure it was Billy who gave us a fighting chance when the time actually came. Never seen anyone calm so many people down that quickly.”

 

Goodnight let out a breath, feeling a rush of emotions: guilt that he hadn’t been there to see it, renewed amazement that they’d made it out at all, and mostly pride that Billy hadn’t let Goodnight’s departure stop him from being the single most unbelievable person Goodnight had ever known. The only emotion he didn’t feel was surprise: Billy had always been able to calm people and Goodnight had known that firsthand for years.

 

“Yeah well,” Goodnight said quietly “He’s pretty good at that.”

 

Vasquez nodded and drummed his fingers on the wooden table.

 

“I should probably go check on my horse if I’m staying over,” he finally said. “Can I take this?” He gestured to the lantern.

 

“Hmm? Yeah sure, I’ll set up a bed for you,” Goodnight said, and they stood up, leaving the table.

 

“You sure you got room?” Vasquez asked as they cut through the living room. “I don’t want to –“

 

“It’s fine, we’ve got two bedrooms,” Goodnight said, gesturing to the room across the main living space from his own. “You can have the other one.”

 

And then Goodnight froze, realizing what he’d said. Goodnight forced himself to look at Vasquez, to see the reaction, his heart pounding but more than ready to throw him out if he had to.

 

But Vasquez just scoffed.

 

“You think I don’t know that already,  _cabrón?_ ” he asked, but his voice was gentle.

 

Goodnight looked at him uncertainly.

 

“You –“

 

“Do I look like an idiot?” Vasquez asked, raising an eyebrow.

 

Goodnight looked at him thoughtfully. The man had been quick in all things: quick with a comment, quick on the draw, quick with a laugh. An idiot was the last thing Vasquez looked like. But Goodnight’s mouth twitched nonetheless.

 

“You sure you want me to answer that?”

 

Vasquez snorted, taking the lantern from him.

 

“You just worry about giving me enough blankets, _hermano_. Or your better half is gonna be mad.”

 

Goodnight smiled at Vasquez’s use of ‘better half’. He had no argument from Goodnight there.

 

And later when he slid in next to Billy, in their bed, wrapping his arms carefully around Billy so as not to wake him, Goodnight reflected that Billy had always been his better half, however much people tended to fawn over Goodnight. Sometimes he wanted to fling Billy in front of them while shouting, ‘Don’t you _see_ this man right here?’ forever baffled that anyone would even bother to look at Goodnight so long as Billy Rocks walked the face of the earth.

 

Goodnight ran a hand lightly over Billy’s chest. He was somewhat surprised Vasquez had seen it. He and Billy were normally good at putting up masks in front of others. They never bothered to hide their loyalty, since open loyalty was often what protected them both. And while they _were_ loyal, they just made sure people couldn’t read the other part of it as well: devotion. Plain and simple.

 

But people didn’t ever really see the other part of it. People didn’t see what they couldn’t even _fathom_. And whatever people made of Goodnight Robicheaux and the man he travelled with, people tended to assume just about _anything_ but the truth, lest their entire worldview be shattered.

 

But Goodnight supposed he shouldn’t have been that surprised Vasquez had picked up on it. In Rose Creek the specter of death had seemed to be swooping lower and lower as it circled the town, the beating of wings sending Goodnight closer to Billy, seeking comfort that Billy had never denied. But along with the sense of almost certain death there’d been a sense of camaraderie as well, the feeling of being among fellow outcasts that had caused Goodnight and Billy to drop their masks around each other. Goodnight knew Sam had guessed, and while he couldn’t speak for the others maybe they had guessed as well. Goodnight and Billy hadn’t been announcing it in the town square or anything. But with the threat of finality all around them it was possible Goodnight and Billy had shown their hand a little bit.

 

Goodnight moved in closer to Billy, smiling somewhat. All he ever wanted was for people to see the same person in Billy that Goodnight saw. Billy was and always would be a far better man than Goodnight, their respective reputations be damned. Goodnight had been living a half-life after the war, a screaming hollowness inside of him, a sense of emptiness that nothing could seem to fill. He thought he’d never feel whole again. And then he’d met Billy.

 

And sliding his arm fully around Billy’s chest, Goodnight tucked himself into his better half and went to sleep.

 

 

*

 

The next morning saw them all around the kitchen table again, eating eggs and bacon which Vasquez insisted on cooking for everyone, still not apparently trusting Goodnight’s abilities with a stove.

 

“My grits weren’t _that_ bad,” Goodnight said disgruntledly.

 

“They were,” Billy and Vasquez said in unison.

 

After eating there was something of a silence. Vasquez looked around the kitchen thoughtfully.

 

“You guys wintering it out here?” he asked with a frown.

 

“That’s the idea,” Billy said, Goodnight biting his lip. Billy caught his eye and rubbed his foot up against Goodnight’s under the table.

 

“Gonna be drafty,” Vasquez commented. “You know you’ve got some space between the beams over there,  _s_ _í_?” He jerked his head to the wall where the logs making up the cabin weren’t pressed completely flush.

 

“Yeah I know,” Goodnight said tiredly. He knew he’d have to get around to it eventually. He’d just figured firewood was a more pressing concern than insulation.

 

“You got a toolbox somewhere around here?” Vasquez asked them.

 

“Yeah,” Goodnight said frowning. “But you don’t have to –“

 

“Least I can do before I go,” Vasquez said interrupting, standing up and clearing their plates, his brisk motions leaving no room for argument. “Considering you put me up for the night and gave me breakfast and all.”

 

“Which you cooked,” Billy pointed out sounding amused.

 

“Doesn’t count, _Cuchillo,_ ” Vasquez said, nodding meaningfully towards Goodnight. “That was just self-preservation.”

 

Billy laughed while Goodnight scowled because okay, they were just trying to rile him up at this point. Goodnight’s cooking was _not_ that bad.

 

Billy showed Vasquez where everything was, and eventually the cabin was filled with the sounds of thunking from the outside where Vasquez was making his way around the perimeter of the house, sealing up any cracks with wooden splints. Goodnight and Billy looked at each other a bit amused by the whole situation.

 

“Be honest, you wrote to him,” Goodnight said, teasing Billy.

 

“How the hell would I know where he’s been?” Billy snorted. “Although it wouldn’t have been the worst idea in the world,” he said, waving his hand to encompass the free labour they’d suddenly gotten.

 

“And what’s that he’s been calling you?” Goodnight asked. “Cuchillo?”

 

“Oh,” Billy said laughing. “I’m not sure I believe him but in Rose Creek he _said_ it meant ‘knife’.”

 

Goodnight laughed too. And he glanced over at the wall of the kitchen, which absorbed another series of muffled thuds from the outside.

 

“Think we could get him to do the roof too?” Goodnight asked with a bit of mirth.

 

Billy eyes were sparkling at Goodnight. “Are you _completely_ shameless?”

 

Goodnight grinned, reaching out to lace his fingers with Billy’s over the table.

 

“Well since you mention it,” he said, lowering his voice and looked up at Billy through his lashes. “He’s going to be out there another hour at least.”

 

Billy’s lip twitched, the hoods of his eyes dropping, and he trailed his fingers over Goodnight’s palm, making Goodnight shiver. “What are you suggesting?”

 

“Well…how are your ribs feeling?”

 

Billy was doing his best to bite back the grin that kept threatening to bubble out over his face. After Billy’s fall they hadn’t been able to manage anything more than hands and mouths on each other, but Billy had been holding himself a lot more easily lately.

 

“Not bad. A little…stiff.”

 

“Oh are they?”

 

Billy nodded seriously. “Throbbing actually.”

 

And then he burst into laughter while Goodnight grinned widely at the man’s silly mood, standing up and pulling Billy along with him to the bedroom.

 

“ _This_ is something I need to see for myself.”

 

An hour later they were sitting on the couch, Goodnight reading, Billy working some feathers onto a fishing fly, sore but not in the ribs, stealing the occasional satisfied glance at each other and smirking hugely whenever their eyes met. Eventually Vasquez came back in, still holding a hammer, wiping some sweat away from his brow.

 

“Hey you got a ladder here?” he asked.

 

“Under the porch,” Billy told him. “Why?”

 

“Thought I might as well fix the roof while I’m at it,” Vasquez said, waving his hand upwards. “You two do know it’s leaking, right?”

 

Goodnight and Billy looked at each other lips twitching

 

If Vasquez was confused about why they’d suddenly burst out laughing and couldn’t seem to stop, he just gave them a strange look and went back outside.

 

                         

*

 

By the time Vasquez finished sealing up the roof it was already mid-afternoon, and they asked him to stay to supper again since it would have been rude to say ‘Thanks for the help, here’s your horse, get going’. And also Billy wanted to keep catching up with him, the two of them sharing gossip about Rose Creek. The things they’d seen, inside jokes created while digging trenches, funny stories about townspeople getting involved, little inconsequential things people had done, all these little slices of life that Goodnight supposed he’d missed while his brain had been clouded by oncoming dread and his eyes had been covered by the shadow of death on wings.

 

They talked for so long it was completely dark again and Vasquez already had a bed set up so it was easy for them to invite him to stay over again. And the next morning Goodnight woke before Billy and went out early to start mending the porch fence that ran around the length of the cabin. Eventually Vasquez stumbled outside bleary-eyed and yawning and slid down against the wall to watch Goodnight work, passing him nails. Later Billy came out with coffee and commentary, somehow more chipper than the both of them, and kept chatting while Goodnight and Vasquez slowly started to wake up a bit more, drinking from the steaming mugs Billy had brought for them, the early morning chill slowly starting to bleed away as the sun came up.

 

Vasquez spent another day just helping out around the house, and Goodnight and Billy invited him to stay over again. And then another day. And then another day. And just like that it seemed like Vasquez was staying with them and neither Billy or Goodnight seemed inclined to stop inviting him. And then eventually they just stopped issuing the invitation altogether since it seemed to go without saying that after dinner they’d move to the living room in front of the fire, Goodnight and Billy sharing cigarettes, Vasquez with a cigar, and chatting for as long as Billy could stay awake.

 

It was nice having him around, partly to have another set of hands around the place. Vasquez had all but handed Goodnight a schedule for things that would need doing before winter, and between them they managed to find an easy working rhythm. It probably helped that they already had one from Rose Creek. Goodnight had once trusted the man to help turn a town into a deathtrap and for Vasquez to have his back once they were in it. So it wasn’t too difficult to trust Vasquez to hold up his end of a beam as they carried over to the house for the smokehouse they were building.

 

Billy wasn’t left out of any of this because Vasquez also managed to find plenty of things for Billy to do. The pills the doctor kept sending helped the sensitivity of his skin, helped a lot with his energy, but he still got sore and tired sometimes and often in a rush when he did. But when it came to work, Vasquez was navigating Billy’s capabilities but also his pride with an ease that Goodnight hadn’t been entirely sure that he _himself_ had been doing very well before Vasquez had shown up. Vasquez gave Billy a tonnage of jobs, light enough to not cause Billy any undue strain but not so light that Billy would have found it insulting. Actually…Vasquez was _very_ insulting to Billy while they worked, and that was probably more effective than anything else.

 

“Seriously, _Cuchillo_?” he asked with disdain when Billy had showed him what he’d been carving. “What the fuck is this supposed to be?”

 

“Snowshoe frame?” Billy said innocently. After sketching out a template for him, Vasquez had told him to work on making several pairs.

 

“I thought you were supposed to be good with knives,” Vasquez snorted. “I’m insulted you’re even showing this to me.”

 

And then he took the frame and tossed it over his shoulder, imperiously telling Billy to go make him another. Billy had spent all morning carving it, but he just bit back a grin and cracked his knuckles and wandered off looking for another promising piece of wood, Vasquez yelling after him to get one that _didn’t_ look like kindling.

 

Goodnight had watched the scene unfold with confoundment and amusement. He and Billy gave each other shit constantly, and he had certainly never treated Billy with kid gloves since the illness…or at least he’d tried not to. But he knew it was easy for him to slip into tenderness where Billy was concerned what with Billy being _only_ just the love of his life and all. He could tell Vasquez had taken a liking to Billy even back in Rose Creek. But since Vasquez’s feelings were _considerably_ less rapturous than Goodnight’s, it probably allowed him to be less sentimental about what Billy could and couldn’t do.

 

Goodnight wasn’t sure why Vasquez had taken it into his head that he was suddenly responsible for the pair of them. Maybe it was because of Rose Creek. Maybe it was just because he’d stumbled across them. But maybe…maybe the man just didn’t have anywhere else to go.

 

Vasquez, as it turned out, was a complete jack-of-all-trades. Woodworking, carpentry, hunting, farming, horse-wrangling, cleaning, just about anything indoors and outdoors he seemed to already know how to do, making Goodnight more curious about the man’s life before and during the period in which he’d become an outlaw.

 

Once Vasquez had tracked and shot a moose in the forest around their cabin, running back for both Goodnight and some rope to help him haul it back. The moose had a bullet in its heart as opposed to the normal lung shot for big game, and Goodnight wondered how carefully and quietly Vasquez must have snuck up on the animal to get such a clean shot through such a small target, ensuring an instant kill.

 

Goodnight and Billy spent all day cleaning and preparing it, Billy being extremely adept at skinning the animal once Vasquez had shown him where to start. And while they worked on the animal, Vasquez set up a vat of boiling water and had somehow made a tanning rack from scratch. And before the sun had fully gone down, Billy was carving out steaks to place in the cabin’s new smokehouse, and Goodnight and Vasquez were standing around staring at the animal’s hide which was stretched out and drying, where it would stay for a few days before they could complete the tanning process. Vasquez had even saved the animal’s brain to use its oils as a natural tanning method.

 

“Vasquez…” Goodnight said slowly, looking at the large hide that was dripping onto the autumn leaves scattered over the grass. “Are you good at _everything_?”

 

Vasquez just shrugged, blade of grass between his teeth.

 

“I’ve had to be.”

 

And work aside, it was just nice having him around for the company. Goodnight and Billy were so used to it being just the two of them, but Vasquez was such an easy presence that it didn’t seem distracting at all to have a third person with them. And Goodnight liked to see Billy having a friend. Goodnight had always been Billy’s best friend but he was still one of Billy’s _only_ friends. People didn’t often want to crack Billy’s exterior and let him in close enough to find out what a good friend he could be, and something about that had always felt deeply unfair to Goodnight.

 

But Billy and Vasquez got on like a house on fire, and Goodnight and the man got along easily too, and nothing about the situation seemed strange. And when the door to Goodnight and Billy’s bedroom closed, sometimes even in the middle of the day, Vasquez didn’t even bat an eye when it opened again.

 

Sometimes they rode down to the town and spent time in the bar, the Colorado drinking lodge so different from desert saloons. The walls would be covered in bear heads and the woodstove in the corner would be burning maple that wafted aromatically around the wooden room. And there was a lot more flannel and woolen wear around the place than the worn leather, denim shirts with elaborate piping, and silver buckles that the three of them were used to, having spent so much time amongst the cowboys further south. The townspeople had already seen Goodnight and Billy, knew two strangers were staying up in the doctor’s cabin. But Goodnight, Billy, and Vasquez together with their equally different but equally flashy exteriors stood out like three sore thumbs in the rustic looking saloon. But liquor is liquor and cards are cards, not to mention Goodnight could charm the antlers off an elk, and soon they’d be gambling and drinking with the locals like they’d lived there all their lives.

 

Goodnight and Billy showed Vasquez their system for gambling, one they’d used to clean up more than a few poker tables. Shooting competitions had never been their only way to make a living, however much the arrangement suited both their skills and personalities. Goodnight and Billy had a lot of ways to make money in towns, and scamming people in poker was only one of many. So they taught Vasquez their tells for cards, hands resting on top of the table, taps against their boots beneath it, fingers sliding through their hair to let each other know the suit and value of the cards they were holding, and Vasquez picked it up in a trice. Eventually it would always be one of the three of them winning each hand, their piles of coins growing larger. But the townspeople were never disgruntled since the three of them just used their winnings to buy everyone drinks. Every time.

 

One night Doctor Black showed up at the bar to deliver some ointments to the innkeeper, the small, elderly woman looking in no way intimidated by the rough and tumble patrons inside, having treated all of them for log-splitting and hunting related injuries at one point or another. Goodnight Billy and Vasquez greeted her loudly and enthusiastically from their round table in the corner of the saloon, all three of them somewhat tipsy. She gave them a look that was so stern and so reminiscent of the nuns that had ran Goodnight’s old boarding school back east, that Goodnight almost fell apart laughing.

 

“Why Sister Black,” he said, catching his breath and giving her a winning schoolboy-grin. “I don’t suppose you’d care to join us for a hand or two?” he asked, not at all expecting her to stay.

 

But she just raised an eyebrow at him and untied her bonnet, sitting down and adjusting her spectacles as she peered at the cards Vasquez dealt her.

 

And then she proceeded to trounce them so thoroughly that all they could do was watch while she stood up and swept her winnings into her neatly embroidered pocketbook, looking a bit smug at their dumbfounded expressions.

 

As soon as she’d left the three of them looked at each other and exploded in laughter. Once they could regain faculty of their voices they made immediate and unanimous plans to invite her up to the cabin for a proper poker night.

 

They finally left the bar swaying slightly, the moon a high silver crescent above the mountaintops, fall breeze whisking around them, Billy leaning into Goodnight, and Vasquez tossing them the reins of their horses which they started to walk back up the mountain path, riding possibly not the best idea in their current state. They walked beneath the conifers, kicking pinecones out ahead of them, laughing and stumbling, Vasquez belting out some Spanish riding song.

 

“Goody,” Billy whined, grinning against Goodnight’s neck. “Someone’s skinning a cat.”

 

Vasquez broke off mid note with an off-key yelp of offense that sent Billy and Goodnight into conniptions of laughter.

 

“You let Goodnight sing all the time while he’s working,” Vasquez said, plucking a pinecone off a low hanging branch and throwing it Billy’s head.

 

“That’s because he can actually sing,” Billy said laughing. “You just sound like a dying wolf.”

 

Vasquez gave him a quicksilver grin which shone in the dark like a second sliver of moon and he threw his head back and let out a dramatic howl which made Billy and Goodnight laugh more.

 

And then, from far away, there came a distant and echoing howl back, a wild, unearthly and almost mournful cry that ghosted through the valley in reply.

 

They stood stock-still and listened to the ethereal and elemental sound until it faded away, dissolving into the air like mist off a mountaintop. And then they just looked at each other with triple huffs of quiet impressed laughter, three wild men who knew when they'd been upstaged.

 

And picking up their horses’ reins again, they continued on home.

 

 

*

 

 

The leaves were falling thicker to the ground lately, carpeting the mountain in a crinkling layer of red and gold that swirled around the log cabin in sweeping arcs, spiraling upwards, braiding together with the smoke that puffed out of the chimney.

 

It was still quite warm out, and wearing anything more than shirtsleeves quickly caused them to broil whenever they were working out in the sun. Goodnight and Vasquez spent most of their time now chopping down trees with the new axes they’d procured, splitting so much firewood it was all Billy could do to sharpen the blunted blades fast enough. They only bothered lighting a fire in the cabin at night, but when preparing for winter the one chore that trumped all others was firewood.

 

Goodnight’s arms, shoulders, and back had never felt more capable and it hadn’t gone unnoticed by Billy in bed, his eyes going a bit dark whenever Goodnight took off his shirt, Billy sitting up and lavishing extra attention to the dips and cuts in the muscles there.

 

Billy had been all but dragging Goodnight to bed lately whenever their bedroom door closed. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t sometimes a little shit about it.

 

One day Goodnight walked into their bedroom to see Billy standing at the small plate glass window and staring at something outside. Goodnight wandered over and took a look to see Vasquez outside and splitting firewood, shirt off, every muscle of his long body on display as he swung an axe into a log, gloved hands wrapped firmly around the handle of an axe.

 

“Down boy,” Goodnight said mildly to Billy, but he couldn’t really blame Billy for looking because Goodnight wasn’t _blind_. Even if he had eyes only for Billy his eyes knew a damn nice sight when they saw one.

 

But he _could_ blame Billy for the way his face brimmed with mischief as he let the curtain to the window flutter shut.

 

“Hey Goody…” he started, biting back a grin.

 

Goodnight looked flatly at him.

 

“No.”

 

Billy snorted as Goodnight walked away.

 

“You haven’t even heard what I’m going to say yet.”

 

“Still no.”

 

Billy’s eyes danced in amusement.

 

“Not even if it was my last dying wish?”

 

“No, and I’m rapidly losing sympathy.”

 

Goodnight walked over to get a glass of water on their bedside table, Billy following. Billy went up behind Goodnight, wrapping his arms around him, nuzzling at his neck like a cat after attention.

 

“Goody…” he said in a singsong voice.

 

“You trying to make me angry?” Goodnight asked, taking a sip of water.

 

He felt Billy smile against the back of his neck. “Yes.”

 

“And why, pray tell?”

 

Billy bit at the lobe of his ear.

 

“Because you’re cute when you’re angry.”

 

“Yeah well I’m about to get a whole lot cuter if you don’t shut up,” Goodnight growled.

 

“Aw, Goody…” Billy said laughing, and finally starting to sound a bit sympathetic. “I’m _kidding_.”

 

“How fun for you.”

 

“I don’t want to fuck Vasquez,” he murmured against Goodnight’s neck.

 

“Hmph.”

 

“I think it would be fun to watch you fuck him though.”

 

Goodnight spat out a mouthful of water.

 

“Jesus Christ, Billy,” he sputtered as Billy cackled and fell back to the bed behind him.

 

Goodnight turned to look at Billy sprawled on the mattress, hair fanned out, still laughing gleefully, and he felt a sharp lick of affection for his ridiculous partner. But he looked at him sternly and said: “You can put that thought right out of your head.”

 

“It’s out.” Billy said, grinning up at him. “Besides, I know you’re too…”

 

He went silent, biting his lip.

 

“Too _what_?” Goodnight said, narrowing his eyes.

 

“Traditional?” Billy smirked, his eyes flicking up to Goodnight.

 

Goodnight looked at Billy’s lips, red from where he’d been biting them, the devilish glint in Billy’s eyes, and Goodnight set his water glass down on the table.

 

“You roll over on that bed, Billy Rocks, and I’ll show you _exactly_ how traditional I can be.”

 

Five minutes later Billy was naked and lying face down on the mattress, quivering as Goodnight’s breath ghosted over his hole and his tongue painted a long slow stripe across it. Goodnight flicked his tongue against the tight muscle and Billy let out a choked sound.

 

They didn’t do this much on the road, given that long hours of riding and sometimes going days between creeks didn’t make it the most hygienically appealing prospect. It was more of a luxury they allowed themselves when they were able to stay somewhere with a good bed, a sturdy lock, and access to hot water for proper cleaning.

 

And that’s when Goodnight noticed that Billy was very clean. Suspiciously clean. Almost…premeditatedly clean.

 

“You son of a bitch,” Goodnight said, looking up at him.

 

“What?”

 

“This is exactly what you were angling for.”

 

“Aren’t you supposed to be proving a point back there?” Billy asked breathlessly, lifting his hips off the bed towards Goodnight.

 

Goodnight rolled his eyes but obliged, licking slow circles around and into Billy’s rim, and Billy keened as he buried his face into the pillow.

 

“You couldn’t just _ask_ me?” Goodnight said, licking another stripe across him, hand rubbing Billy’s hip.

 

“More fun this way,” was the pillow-muffled response.

 

“Well I’m expecting reciprocation just for that,” Goodnight murmured, sliding his hand up Billy’s back as he got back to work.

 

Billy own hand reached back, fingers tangling with Goodnight’s.

 

“Equal shares, partner. Equal shares.”

 

Billy for his part still looked as sturdy and strong as ever and he managed just fine during the day. If Goodnight didn’t know every part of the man inside and out he might not have even noticed that Billy was slowly losing energy. But Billy even slightly weakened was still about ten times more capable than most people in the peak of their health. He wasn’t in any significant pain, at least not yet, and since he was still in good spirits Goodnight tried not to dwell on it. There was no shortage of distractions whether it was the new projects Vasquez kept throwing at them or their long ridiculous conversations around the fireplace, down in the town’s bar, or around the kitchen table whose wobble they’d finally fixed. There were also their occasional poker nights with Doctor Black who turned out to be a teetotaler but could still gamble them all under the table. Or there was even just sitting around outside, jobs for the day finished but the view of distant mountain cliffs, a shimmering lake right out back, or rustling treetops too much to resist.

 

Billy was happy these days. Or as close to it as he could be. He would sometimes withdraw in thought, his eyes far away, going through his own internal world that ran deeper than still water. But he wasn’t angry anymore, the way he’d been after they’d first found out. He seemed to have accepted his fate, and while he wasn’t happy about _that_ he had taken a realistic approach. And as long as he still had energy he’d focus it on the chores Vasquez gave him, or focused it on Goodnight, rolling on top of him just about every night and showing him through his body just how much of himself he wanted to give to Goodnight to keep with him after he was gone.

 

It wasn’t that Goodnight couldn’t accept that this time next year Billy wouldn’t be here: it was that he could hardly _believe_ it. He’d lived before Billy but after the war it was like part of him had gone to sleep, unable to cope with reality, merging daylight with nightmares until Goodnight didn’t even know what was real anymore. And then Billy had woken him up, opened Goodnight’s eyes until all that filled them was Billy. And one day when Goodnight closed his eyes, Billy wasn’t going to be there when he opened them again. The thought was almost ludicrous. It was like telling Goodnight the sun wouldn’t come up.

 

Goodnight was dimly aware of how much he was going to splinter and crack and have his very essence blown away once Billy was gone. But as long as Billy was still here, that’s what Goodnight would focus on. Billy alive and breathing and still the best part of Goodnight’s life.

 

So the days passed and they were good days. Good with Billy, good with Vasquez, and Goodnight could scarcely remember the couple of weeks they’d spent in the cabin _before_ the man had shown up out of the blue, bringing his peculiar blend of animated vigor and stalwart dependability with him.

 

One day Goodnight was sitting on the carpet whittling pegs for coat hooks, Billy lying stretched on the sofa above him, fingers idling in Goodnight’s hair when Vasquez came in asking Goodnight where he’d placed the shovel.

 

“Back porch,” Goodnight told him. “What for?”

 

“We’re gonna need a second woodshed,” Vasquez said, picking up Billy’s water glass and taking a long swig of it, ignoring Billy’s mild protests. “Probably not for a while but I want to dig a foundation for it before the ground gets too cold.”

 

“Need a hand?” Goodnight called after him as Vasquez cut through the cabin.

 

“Nah, won’t take long,” Vasquez said waving him off, going out back to locate the shovel.

 

Billy’s fingers had stilled in Goodnight’s hair.

 

“What?” Goodnight asked him, looking up at Billy to see a strange expression on the man’s face.

 

Billy didn’t answer. He just got up and went over to stoke the coals in the fireplace like he’d suddenly gone cold.

 

He sat back down on the carpet across from Goodnight, reaching for one of the wooden pegs. But he didn’t trim or whittle away the bumps, just rolled it between his fingers, a line between his eyebrows.

 

Goodnight watched him, knowing Billy was working out was he was thinking before saying it. So he refrained from pressing although he suddenly felt like he’d swallowed lead.

 

Finally Billy looked up.

 

“Vasquez said the ground is getting colder,” Billy finally said quietly.

 

“I suppose,” Goodnight said, pushing away the feeling of round amber eyes staring at him from far away. “It’s not too bad out though.”

 

“No I mean,” Billy tapped the wooden peg against the frame for the coatrack. It sounded like the clicking of a beak. “The ground is getting colder.”

 

He looked at Goodnight, his face soft but somewhat uneasy.

 

“I’m…I’m going to need a grave,” he said, so quietly Goodnight almost didn’t hear the last word. “We need to dig a grave.”

 

Goodnight stared at him, the rushing of wings suddenly all he could hear as it roared through his ears. Suddenly every animal head mounted on the walls was staring at him, the black glass eyes glimmering at him. He forced himself to focus on Billy’s eyes, his dark gentle eyes, warm in the cabin’s light.

 

“You,” Goodnight started to say, needing to swallow. “You want to be buried?” was all he could think of to say. They hadn’t actually talked about it yet.

 

“Well,” Billy said shrugging. “I guess I don’t care either way. I just want what would be easiest for you. Figured a normal burial would be that.”

 

Goodnight felt like he was suffocating, like he had dirt filling his lungs, trapped under layers of earth. He put down his whittling knowing he would probably slice his hands open, and laced his fingers together so that they wouldn’t shake.

 

“I guess,” he said quietly.

 

Billy nodded. “There’s always…” he looked reluctant to even say it. “Cremation?”

 

He sounded like he was trying to help. But Goodnight looked over Billy’s shoulder to the fireplace behind him, and he didn’t know what his face must have done, but it was enough to make Billy get up and come sit by him, rubbing his hand soothingly through Goodnight’s hair.

 

“Forget it,” he said. “Do what you want. It makes no difference to me. But if you wanted to dig a grave I guess you should do it soon.”

 

Goodnight took in a deep breath, trying to remind himself that it was air flowing into his lungs and not soil. He shook his head clear and heard Vasquez walking back into the living room.

 

“I’m not going to dig your grave while you’re still alive, you ghoul,” Goodnight said as casually as possible, trying to inject some jocularity into his voice, but even he could hear how haunted he sounded.

 

He heard Vasquez stop behind them and Billy looked up at him. Goodnight didn’t see what kind of look passed between them because his eyes were fixed on the fireplace, the red coals not looking nearly as friendly as before. They just looked like eyes in the dark.

 

Later over supper Goodnight was still preoccupied. Billy and Vasquez were chatting away about something or other but Goodnight was barely taking it in, thinking about his earlier conversation with Billy.

 

Trust Billy to be as pragmatic about his death as he was about everything else. The need for a grave was something Goodnight hadn’t even considered. His lip twitched for a second as he ludicrously imagined Vasquez adding something like ‘grave digging’ to their daily chores, right there between splitting logs and cleaning gutters.

 

Although…Billy had said he didn’t mind either way. Goodnight wondered what other options were even available though.

 

Billy had mentioned cremation…Goodnight liked the idea of scattering ashes to the wind. It seemed freer than a grave somehow. But then he thought about how he’d have to get the ashes, and of Billy on top of a funeral pyre. Could Goodnight really do that? Really place Billy above logs, really set him on – on _fire_ , and watch the flames lick closer and closer to his body until they were burning his flesh?

 

Goodnight looked up at Billy and the light of the oil lamp flickered against Billy’s face in a ghastly streak that licked across the man’s eyes. Billy glanced over at him and Goodnight looked away quickly.

 

His gaze fell to the lake outside, shining silver in the dark. Billy had always liked the water. Maybe a water burial would be fitting?

 

But then Goodnight imagined breaking through the ice that would have formed by then…of having to let Billy go beneath the cold water and watch him slip into the inky depths of the lake. He imagined Billy pulled along by the current, trapped under the ice, his hair fanning out around his face which would have gone blue from the cold, and Billy had always been so warm, oh god he’d be so cold and alone down there, his face gone so still and frozen in Goodnight’s mind, that calm and warm face that Goodnight had kissed every part of now so cold and lifeless, fish swimming up to the skin and starting to take the first tentative nibbles –

 

Goodnight stood up, the chair screeching. Billy and Vasquez looked up at him but his heart was racing too much to notice, his eyes a thousand leagues away.

 

“I’m,” he whispered in a voice that cracked like ice over water. And then he abruptly turned away, leaving his plate there and walking into the bedroom, shutting the door, sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the wall, not seeing anything, not focusing on anything, muscles taut and trembling.

 

It wasn’t much longer before Billy came in, closing the door behind him. He didn’t say anything, just quietly climbed on the bed to kneel behind him. He wrapped his arms around Goodnight’s chest, resting his chin on Goodnight’s shoulder.

 

He was humming something. Goodnight vaguely recognized it as a tune from Billy’s country. Billy had hummed it to Goody before, and while he’d never said outright if the Korean song was a lullaby or not, Goodnight just assumed it was. But Goodnight just closed his eyes and focused on the vibrations that ran though him as Billy hummed to him, focused on Billy’s breathing tickling his neck, focused on Billy's hand running over his chest, easing the air back in until Goodnight was breathing normally.

 

They stayed there for what could have been hours, Billy’s arms wrapped around Goodnight, rocking him just the barest amount, more of a steady sway, humming into Goodnight’s ear, warm hands grounding him with their motions.

 

Eventually Goodnight’s breathing started to slow out. Billy pulled Goodnight back onto the bed, still holding him in his arms, Goodnight getting sleepier and sleepier.

 

He suddenly had a distant memory…of riding past Indian graves...Vasquez’s voice saying, ‘Never trust a people who bury their dead above the ground’…Goodnight himself replying, ‘Don’t call the alligator big mouthed ‘till you cross the river’…

 

But an open-air burial…above the ground…warm breeze…beneath the sun…under the sky…not trapped…

 

Maybe there was something to the idea…

 

That was the last thought Goodnight had before he started to slip into sleep, losing himself to the feeling of Billy’s hand, warm and present, rubbing circles into Goodnight’s back, circling, circling…

 

…circling…

 

_…circling…_

 

_…circling, circling, lower and lower, soaring over the trees, using the occasional beat of wings to lift up, to stay aloft to see and hear and sense everything down below, every slither over the leaves from the long serpents that thrashed in tight talons, every scurry of feet from the small creatures that fled the shadow as it passed over their burrows…_

 

_the shadow rippled, distorted by the top of the trees as it flew over them, its sense of smell poor but strong enough to recognize the scent of pines mingled with rock, mingled with the fur of small creatures, the scent of cloth, human cloth, unnatural on the forest floor, but covering the scent of flesh, still-warm flesh, a lot of it…_

_lower and lower, skimming the treetops now, round eyes looking for a break in the trees where the sense was coming from, the sense of so much skin down below…_

_the owl circled lower, dipping down, and saw it was a man. Men had guns, men carried long sticks which they pointed towards the sky, the sticks made loud explosions, the explosions sent the owl’s brothers out of the sky, only to be propped up mid-flight on walls…_

_this man wasn’t holding the stick though…he wasn’t holding anything, his hands were crossed over his chest, he looked like he was sleeping…_

_the owl’s insides clenched around nothing, it had been a long winter, the mountains were still cold, but it could sense the warmth from the man below, the blood in him no longer flowing but still liquid, the stiffness of death not yet set in…_

_the owl swooped, plummeting towards the ground, pulling back its wings at the last minute to sail down, talons outstretched, closer and closer to the man’s face, his peaceful face, not moving, not fighting back, eyes closed…_

_the owl’s claws sunk into the man’s eyes, talons squeezing and squeezing until the eyeballs were rupturing, vitreous fluid slicking up the sharp tips of the claws which dug in further, gelatinous fluid rising up, smelling strong, pungent, but beneath it the thicker, headier flow of blood…_

_talons ripped out, dribbling clear thick jelly and then the owl was bending down, feet digging into the cloth of a collar, staining it with the liquid, and then it loomed down over the man’s face, beak opening eagerly…_

_the beak sunk into flesh, the owl warming all over from the first gush of skin and blood, the heady first rush of a feast flooding its brain, sinking down its gullet as it choked back the long strip of skin it had come away with, rushing down eagerly for a second taste…_

_blood pulsed out, warm over its beak, the thick heat everywhere, gushing between the strips of skin which the owl continued to rip away, voraciously ingesting, forcing down its gullet, skin still poking out of its mouth even while it bent down for the next peeling of flesh, the sharp beak sinking easily into the soft skin which was becoming more and more ragged, a mess of pulp, a bloody mask, a botched and ravaged mess that didn’t even resemble –_

“BILLY!” Goodnight screamed bolting upright, blankets trapping him, suffocating him, pinning him like a straightjacket. He finally managed to wrench them off, running out of the bedroom and stopping in his tracks.

 

The living room spun around him, a hellish display of animal heads which were all laughing at Goodnight, their dark glass eyes as cold as ice and glowing in the dark, their petrified tongues sliding out of the skulls in forked, devilish slivers that wagged at him in their mockery.

 

Goodnight moaned and clutched his hands to his head, squeezing his eyes shut and running to find the door, flinging doors open, looking for the door to the outside, because the owl was out there, the owl was here and it was _eating. Billy._

 

He wrenched a handle to the side and finally tasted the night air as it rushed through his nose and he took off running towards the trees, tripping and stumbling over the rocks which dug into his bare feet, but Goodnight kept running hell-bent towards the mass of feathers he spied at the base of a tree, its wings outstretched, fanned out to protect its food, to keep Goodnight from reaching Billy.

 

“I WILL KILL YOU,” Goodnight roared, flinging himself down to the owl, sinking his hands into its ruffled feathered body and ripping it in half.

 

“YOU CAN’T HAVE HIM,” he screamed, tearing a fistful of feathers out of its skin.

 

He was dimly aware of someone shouting, but maybe it was just the echo of Goodnight’s voice as he yelled at the owl, screaming at it, hating it with every second he ripped it apart with his bare hands.

 

“GET OFF OF HIM,” he yelled, sinking his fingers into feathered flesh again and feelings his hands crunching bone, cracking its ribs, breaking its wings, it would never fly again, never circle over them again, never touch Billy so long as Goodnight kept its shifting and thrashing mass beneath his hands.

 

He tore feathers out, feeling bones splinter and crunch between his fingers, feathers tickling the backs of his hands until he could rip off their whisper altogether, ripping through plumes, snapping the quills, mutilating the owl and tearing it apart, finding its claws and ripping out the talons, crippling it.

 

Arms threw themselves around him from the back, a voice distantly calling his name but Goodnight barely registered it, hands ripping the owl apart in a frenzy. He found its heart and crushed it.

 

The pair of arms tightened around his chest from behind.

 

“GET OFF HIM,” he roared at the owl, fingers searching for the eyes.

 

“I’ll get off as soon as you breathe, come on, breathe for me, Goodnight.”

 

“I’LL KILL YOU,” he screamed again as he finally found the eyes and dug his thumbs right into the hateful yellow sockets once and for all.

 

“ _S_ _í, s_ _í,_ you can kill me after you take a breath, come on, _amigo,_ take a breath now.”

 

Goodnight started hyperventilating as the owl began to crumble like bits of charred paper through his fingers.

 

“I can’t, I can’t find it –“ Goodnight’s hands went to drive thought the bird’s carcass but it was starting to blow away, scattering across the ground, his fingers searching for its traces.

 

“Shhh, yes you can, _eres capable_ , come on, breathe, Goodnight.”

 

Goodnight blinked, the ground slowly swimming into view, not showing the mess of blood, bone and feathers he was expecting.

 

“It’s gone…” he whispered.

 

“ _S_ _í,_ it’s gone, just breathe come on, take a breath with me. In. Breathe in.”

 

Goodnight blindly listened to the firm voice that was tickling his ear and he took a ragged breath, the forest floor becoming sharper.

 

“ _Bueno_ , that’s it, now out. Out. Let it go, Goodnight, let it go.”

 

Goodnight breathed out, feeling some of the frenzy leave him and scatter to the wind.

 

“Come on, in…out…in…out…”

 

Goodnight breathed along with the low rumbling voice, thinking blindly for a moment that it was Billy, but he realized Billy had never had that much beard scratching against his neck when he murmured for Goodnight to breathe after nightmares, Billy didn’t smell like cigars, the span of Billy’s arms wasn’t quite so long as he held Goodnight’s arms to him to stop Goodnight from thrashing out…

 

Goodnight took in one more deep breath, fully waking up, the cold of the night suddenly biting into him, finally registering the sharp sting from where rocks had sliced through the soles of his bare feet. He looked down at the ground and realized his hands were buried in leaves and broken twigs. No owl in sight. And there was no Billy either because Billy was still alive, Billy was back in the cabin, and Goodnight was outside in the middle of the night, trying to rip apart a goddamn pile of leaves.

 

“Oh Jesus,” Goodnight gasped out, finally going limp in Vasquez’s arms, fight and frenzy finally draining from him.

 

He stayed kneeling there beneath the tree with Vasquez’s arms around him while he collected himself, pulling his hands out of the leaves to press them to his face.

 

Finally Goodnight straightened up when his breath became less ragged, and Vasquez let go, keeping a hand on Goodnight’s shoulder, a steady presence.

 

“You gonna be alright?” Vasquez asked behind him in a murmur, and Goodnight was relieved he hadn’t said something stupid like ‘ _Are_ you alright?’ when the answer was so clearly no. Goodnight realized that in his frenzy of opening doors he must have burst into Vasquez’s room too, sending him running out after Goodnight.

 

“I…yeah,” Goodnight finally managed to say in weak voice. “Not my first rodeo.”

 

Vasquez squeezed his shoulder. Goodnight couldn’t bring himself to turn around and look at Vasquez’s eyes to see what was in them, whether it was sympathy, confusion, embarrassment, or pity.

 

But there was none of that in Vasquez’s voice as he said: “Is there anything you need?” He said it matter-of-factly, as matter-of-fact in this as he was in all things.

 

“No, I – actually yes,” Goodnight said, running his hands over his knees, dirt staining the fabric of them since he’d fallen asleep in his clothes. “Can you go check on Billy?” Billy had been sleeping deeper lately, but he would certainly have heard Goodnight’s yelling himself awake.

 

Vasquez didn’t go immediately, seemed unsure as to why Goodnight was asking, like Goodnight wanted Vasquez to leave so he could do something that might hurt himself whether on purpose or by accident.

 

“I’ll just be a minute,” Goodnight added tiredly. “I just need to…”

 

Goodnight shrugged, the motion lifting Vasquez’s hand where it still covered Goodnight’s shoulder.

 

“I don’t want him to be alone right now.”

 

“And you, _hermano?_ ” Vasquez said quietly. “Do you want to be alone?”

 

Goodnight bit his lip hard as he took in a shaky breath.

 

“Might as well start getting used to it,” he said in a humorless voice, and it wasn’t an answer and Vasquez knew it wasn’t an answer, but he squeezed his hand over Goodnight’s shoulder once more and then let go as he stood up. Goodnight stayed there beneath the tree, distantly hearing the cabin door open and shut as Vasquez went back in. Goodnight wanted to go back in too, wanted to see Billy’s face so badly. But he knew he had to let the rest of the nightmare fade away into the night air first. He didn’t want the vision of Billy’s face, mauled and bloody, to still be in his eyes when he went back in.

 

He waited until the nightmare became blurrier like they always did, retreating into the darker places of his mind where he couldn’t see them. Then he stood up, his knees damp, feet bleeding, and he walked gingerly back to the cabin. He limped inside and Goodnight could see light moving under the door of Vasquez’s room, a little grateful that the man was back in there. Not that Vasquez hadn’t navigated Goodnight’s delusions out there as capably as he did everything else, but it might have been somewhat awkward to face him back in this setting so soon after he’d just seen Goodnight trying to eviscerate a damn leaf pile.

 

Goodnight walked into the bedroom where Billy was standing over the room’s table, lighting an oil lamp which stood next to a full washbasin, anticipating Goodnight’s state when he came back. Even when he wasn’t beside Goodnight, Billy was still always looking out for him.

 

Goodnight’s heart clenched as Billy turned around and looked quietly at him. Goodnight walked over to him, Billy taking his hands between his. Billy rubbed his hands over Goodnight’s cold ones, warming them up until they felt as alive as Billy’s. Goodnight let his eyes fall shut to just feel it all, the familiarity of it, the safety of it. They were small gestures but the history behind them was boundless.

 

Billy lifted Goodnight’s hands to his mouth and Goodnight opened his eyes to watch Billy press a kiss to each palm, slow and gentle, not minding the dirt. His face was smooth as he rubbed it against Goodnight’s hands, letting Goodnight feel he was there.

 

The oil lamp was the only light in the room and it flickered around them, dancing across the walls as they stood in the shadowy bedroom pressed together. Billy dipped Goodnight’s hands into the basin and ran a cloth over them until the last bits of earth trailed off his skin, sediment pooling in the bottom of the basin.

 

“Sit down,” Billy said quietly, and Goodnight sat on the edge of the bed.

 

Billy wrung out the cloth and kneeled by Goodnight’s feet. His hair slipped over his bare shoulders which glowed in the lamp’s soft flame as he ran the cloth over Goodnight’s bloodied feet. It felt an awful lot like an apology.

 

“You didn’t say anything you shouldn’t have,” Goodnight said to him.

 

Billy looked up, his dark eyes soft but resolute. He shook his head, hair swaying across his eyes.

 

“I regretted it the second I brought it up,” Billy said. “I shouldn’t have said a thing.”

 

Goodnight moved off the bed, sinking to the floor to kneel in front of Billy until they were eye-level.

 

“Yes. You should. You should say absolutely anything you want to me,” Goodnight said seriously. “Anything, Billy.”

 

Billy looked at him uncertainly and Goodnight lifted his hands to Billy’s face. His hands were still damp and a droplet trailed down Billy’s cheek.

 

“I know I said it doesn’t make a difference to me, but…” Billy paused and Goodnight nodded to him to go on.

 

“I want to be buried,” Billy said looking at him. “I want your hands to be the last thing on me.”

 

Goodnight brushed his hand over Billy’s face. His smooth, unmarked face.

 

“I’ll bury you, Billy Rocks,” Goodnight said quietly but firmly. Billy breathed out in relief and Goodnight leaned forward to catch the exhale against his own lips.

 

“I can’t dig your grave while you’re still alive,” Goodnight murmured there, and felt Billy’s chin lift as the man nodded. “I can’t. But I will bury you. I promise.”

 

Billy leaned forward, his lips brushing Goodnight’s as he touched foreheads with him.

 

“Thank you.”

 

 

*

 

Goodnight slept late the following morning, the sun already high and streaming into the room. The window had the lightest brushing of frost over the glass and the sunlight sheened through it sending tiny yellow lights dancing across Goodnight’s eyelids as he woke up. He stared at the crystalline display until the sun melted through the frost completely, sending it trickling freely down the glass in warm rivulets.

 

He got up, Billy already out and about somewhere. Goodnight walked into the living room which had a fire going, Vasquez in one of the armchairs absorbed in a book. Goodnight sat down on the sofa and looked into the fire. The coals no longer seemed to be watching him. The flames crackled comfortably.

 

Goodnight picked at a thread in the sofa, looking around the room, trying to figure out what looked different about it. And then he realized: all the taxidermy animals were gone, the stuffed heads no longer on the walls. The antlers were still up but anything with eyes had been taken down and put away.

 

He looked over at Vasquez who wasn’t looking up, reading one of the cabin’s many generic volumes about fly-fishing. He turned a page while adjusting his glasses, and since when did Vasquez wear glasses? Goodnight supposed he hadn’t actually seen him reading anything before.

 

Goodnight sat silently while Vasquez read in his chair. Finally he cleared his throat.

 

“Thanks,” Goodnight said quietly.

 

Vasquez turned a page.

 

“Anytime.”

 

 

*

 

 

The air was getting colder, the cold pouring down the side of the mountain like water, parting once it reached the house, as though the cabin was a stone in a river. But the cabin itself was snug, completely insulated against the elements, firewood stockpiled, and everything ready for the snow that wasn’t making an appearance yet. It barely resembled the cabin of a few months ago and it was strange not having much to do outside anymore. But it was never boring on the inside.

 

“So _then_ ,” Vasquez said with a grin, spreading his hands for emphasis, some whiskey sloshing out of the glass in it. He looked at them, a laugh already bubbling out of his lips. “We brought him around the other side of the wall and I said, ‘ _Pendejo_ …that wasn’t a person you just stuck your dick into!’”

 

Goodnight and Billy exploded, Billy practically collapsing on the carpet, Goodnight covering his nose so whiskey wouldn’t shoot up out of it.

 

Vasquez’s shoulders were shaking where he sat in front of the fireplace. He had barely been able to get through his punchline without laughing, and now that it was out of the way he could do it fully.

 

“Oh my _god_ ,” Billy choked out.

 

“Swear to God I haven’t eaten an enchilada since.”

 

“Did…did he,” Goodnight started to say, laughing again at what was maybe the raunchiest story he’d ever heard in his life. “All the way _?_ I mean _la petite mort_ and everything?”

 

Vasquez grinned. “What’s that now, _hermano_?”

 

“You know…” Goodnight resigned himself to making a crude gesture that would have been understood in any language and Vasquez’s grin widened.

 

“Of course…” Vasquez said, lips trembling with barely concealed mirth, eyes snapping devilishly. “Where do you think the sauce comes from?”

 

They all lost it again, slumped on the carpet in front of the fire. If the walls had been any less sturdy they might have been shaking from how hard they were laughing.

 

“Oh my lord,” Goodnight wheezed as he finally sat up wiping his eyes. Vasquez cackled as he held out his glass to Billy with a shaking hand, and Billy topped it up for him with a grin.

 

“I am so glad we’re done eating,” Goodnight said, their empty plates scattered around them on the carpet where’d they’d had their dinner like they’d been sitting around a campfire outside.

 

Billy leaned back shaking his head, his shoulders still quaking with silent laughter as he reached for his cigarette case. He’d been planning on taking out a normal one, but Goodnight saw his fingers linger over the large, hand-rolled cigarette that contained the last of their opiate supply.

 

He held it up to Goodnight, lifting an eyebrow. They rarely used them anymore, slowly spacing them apart, using them mostly for pleasure as opposed to business. Goodnight hadn’t needed them very much after Rose Creek, the Owl still there but following far enough away for him to breathe a little easier. Physically Goodnight wasn’t completely together and he doubted he ever would be. He would always have that restless static coursing beneath his skin, ready to sizzle and spark out at anything that set him off. But…

 

He glanced outside to where he’d torn up the leaves in a frenzy, convinced, _so_ convinced it was the Owl. And the thing was…Goodnight wasn’t entirely sure it _wasn’t_. He hadn’t felt its gaze on his back since, and the part of him that was both superstitious and optimistic hoped that maybe he wouldn’t again. It hadn’t been the first time the Owl had found him since Rose Creek, reaching out with its talons. But it had been the first time Goodnight had reached back.

 

Goodnight grinned at Billy.

 

“Light ’er up.”

 

Billy scraped a match along the foot of the couch they were leaning against while lounging on the carpet and he took a deep inhale, leaning his head back and blowing a stream of smoke out towards the ceiling. He handed it to Goodnight.

 

Goodnight took in a puff, the heady and cloying smoke swirling familiarly in his lungs. When it was recreational it didn’t taste like it was chasing off panic. It just tasted like relaxed, hazy ritual.

 

“That’s what you had in Rose Creek, isn’t it?” Vasquez asked looking at them, and then back at the cigarette. “Okay be honest…what the hell is that stuff?”

 

Goodnight raised his eyebrows at Billy who jerked his head, so many invisible tells that they could read in each other like a book at this point. Goodnight grinned and stretched his arm out, offering it to Vasquez.

 

Vasquez took it from him, sniffing it skeptically but holding it with a can-do resolve. He raised to his lips and took a puff, Goodnight and Billy both watching with twin expectant expressions.

 

Vasquez held it in his lungs and then finally breathed it out in a gasp, thumping his chest. He passed it back to Billy.

 

“You’re both crazier than I thought,” he said, his eyes watering a little.

 

“Not a fan?” Goodnight asked smirking.

 

“I didn’t say that,” Vasquez replied with a grin. “Just surprised.”

 

“Not as surprised as your friend with the enchilada,” Billy drawled, setting Vasquez and Goodnight off again.

 

“ _Dios m_ _ío,_ ” Vasquez said with an honest to God _giggle_. “And after we pranked him, anytime we ever saw someone eating one, one of us would always say, ‘Don’t wave that around or Pedro will try to steal your woman!’”

 

Goodnight chuckled, taking the cigarette from Billy. “I’ve heard some pretty terrible first-time stories, but I’ve got to hand it to you: his is possibly the worst one I’ve heard _yet_.”

 

Vasquez grinned as Goodnight blew out a few smoke rings.

 

“Well what about you then, _hermano_?”

 

“What about me?” Goodnight asked, passing him the cigarette.

 

Vasquez took a bigger hit this time, expecting the warm, almost saccharine smoke.

 

“First time?” he said a bit impishly but also curiously, eyes sliding over to Billy as though to check he wasn’t overstepping. “I’m not insulting your beloved’s honour am I?”

 

“What honour?” Billy asked dryly, knocking his socked feet into Goodnight’s who squawked in protest.

 

Vasquez laughed at them and Goodnight turned to him.

 

“She was a childhood pal, since you ask. Daughter of some family friends who owned the neighbouring sugar plantation.”

 

Vasquez’s lip twitched before giving Goodnight a piercing look. “Let me guess: outside, beneath a willow tree, and you almost got your dick stuck in her hoopskirt. Am I right?”

 

Goodnight hummed thoughtfully. “I believe it was an oak tree.”

 

They laughed and Billy took the cigarette.

 

“Tell him how _old_ you were,” Billy said, taking a drag.

 

“Ah,” Goodnight said a bit sheepishly. “Thirteen.”

 

Vasquez let out a low whistle. “Well that’s got me beat.”

 

“Well neither of us had the first clue what we were doing,” Goodnight admitted, taking the cigarette from Billy, his previous hits starting to set in, giving him a pleasant cloudy feeling as his mind travelled back. “We were always running around the meadows, playing little games…she was my first kiss too,” Goodnight added with a hazy nostalgic smile.

 

Billy gave him a soft smile and Goodnight suddenly wanted to kiss him too. But even though it was only Vasquez with them who had more than earned their trust, it was something they just didn’t _do_ in front of other people, camouflaging their kisses instead through cigarettes, water canteens, even sometimes swapping forks when it would go unnoticed.

 

“Well one day we’d gotten the hang of the kissing thing and decided to play at being grownups, and then things escalated, base human instinct took over, and we got a little more grownup than we meant to,” Goodnight said with a shrug.

 

“Is that kind of thing common?” Vasquez asked. “For all you Southern gentleman types?”

 

“Oh dear me no,” Goodnight said, stretching where he was leaning against the sofa. “People didn’t do that sort of thing. And truthfully…we just had no idea what it was that we were actually _doing_. Pretty sure the only person who knew what was going on that day was Mother Nature.” He took another small hit of the cigarette.

 

“It wasn’t until we were about seventeen that we realized the extent of what we’d done, what all that fumbling actually meant, and she was so upset and mortified that she never spoke to me again. If I’d told anyone she would have been ruined, but I never would have done that,” Goodnight added more earnestly than he’d meant to. While he’d always found there to be a dissonance between learning what virginity was at the same time he’d realized his was already gone, he hadn’t been so much upset about that as he was at the fact that he’d lost a friend over it.

 

“Anyways,” he said, rolling the cigarette between his fingers. “It was probably too much to hope that we could have stayed pals, and the next time I ever tried something like that again, man or woman, I was in my twenties. But the main event itself had its own aesthetic appeal I suppose…outdoors…bed of flowers…birds…bees…birds _and_ the bees the ones making the decision for us…it could have been much worse.”

 

Goodnight had a slight bittersweet regret at such an early loss of innocence, but he had so many harder and more painful regrets that this one had managed to stay in the corner of his mind that he reserved for softer memories.

 

Vasquez was smiling a little as he took the cigarette from Goodnight. “That’s not too bad.”

 

“How about you?” Goodnight asked him, leaning his head back against the sofa cushions. “You’re the one who brought it up.”

 

“Well,” Vasquez said, smoke wafting out between his lips. “Not quite that flowery. I was seventeen and she was the most gorgeous thing on legs, but she was the sister of one of the tougher ones in my neighbourhood. Eduardo Espinosa. He was my age and I guess we were in the same pack whenever trouble started, but even at seventeen you didn’t want to cross him, and you _really_ didn’t want to do it by fucking his sister.”

 

Vasquez gave a rakish grin, passing the cigarette to Billy. “Except I did want to fuck her.”

 

Billy and Goodnight both snorted.

 

“Then what?” Billy asked, taking a lazy pull of smoke.

 

“Well Eduardo found out somehow,” Vasquez said. “And he broke into the room I was renting in that village, waiting there to threaten me.”

 

“So he was upset then,” Goodnight said mildly, taking the cigarette from Billy and raising it to his lips.

 

“Mmm, he was at first,” Vasquez agreed, lost in thought. His eyes snapped back to them and he grinned a bit wickedly. “But not after I fucked him too.”

 

Goodnight choked on a lungful of smoke. Billy thumped him on the back, but Billy was just laughing at Vasquez, not looking particularly surprised.

 

“Jesus Christ,” Goodnight wheezed. His eyes were streaming and you could have knocked him over with a feather at that reveal, but he just looked up at Vasquez with a baffled grin.

 

“Is that kind of thing common for all you Vaqueros?” he asked, mimicking Vasquez’s earlier tone.

 

Vasquez grinned in recognition.

 

“Oh dear me no.”

 

“So who was better?” Billy asked drolly, having stopped patting Goodnight on the back but was digging his fingers between Goodnight’s shoulder blades, giving him an impromptu massage. “Him or his sister?”

 

“Apples and oranges, _Cuchillo_ ,” Vasquez said with a wink. “Apples and oranges.”

 

Billy shrugged and lifted his arms up, stretching them over his head.

 

“Anyone still hungry?” he asked casually.

 

“Nice try,” Vasquez said snorting. “Goodnight went, I went, come on. First time. _Vamos_.”

 

Billy’s arms fell to his sides, resigned. “Well I wasn’t _quite_ as…what do you say?” he asked Goodnight. “Early flower?”

 

“Early bloomer,” Goodnight said, smiling around the cigarette, forever charmed by Billy’s occasional malapropisms.

 

“That,” Billy said gravely.

 

“Man or woman?” Vasquez asked curiously.

 

“Man. Even if I had ever liked women like that it’s not like I came across any like me on the road. And I could have been killed for being with a white woman.” Billy looked at them. “I had a bit more dangerous things to worry about than jealous brothers or plantation gossip.”

 

Goodnight and Vasquez went a little quiet but Billy just shrugged, grinning at them both to show he was mostly teasing.

 

“I was much older when I finally went to bed with a man for the first time,” Billy said.

 

“You know this story?” Vasquez asked Goodnight.

 

“I do,” Goodnight said mildly. “But I could hear it again.”

 

“White man or like you?” Vasquez asked Billy.

 

“White man,” Billy said with a slight roll to his eyes but his lips were twitching in reminiscence. “He was just some guy I met on the road and had been riding with for a while because it was too dangerous to ride alone through that area.”

 

“After a while I noticed him looking at me, and he wasn’t really subtle about it. But he was never pushy. I don’t think he realized I wanted him too.”

 

Billy took the shortening cigarette and gave them both a deadpan look.

 

“I’m told I’m very hard to read.”

 

Goodnight and Vasquez laughed and Billy took a puff of smoke, eyes twinkling.

 

“Anyways one day we got caught in a storm, needed to find shelter, and once we did we both started getting out of our wet clothes and…”

 

“…and?” Vasquez prompted him.

 

Billy blew a stream of smoke at him. “And use your imagination.”

 

Vasquez scoffed but took the hint. “Does my imagination at least get a name?”

 

Billy smiled a bit softly as he rolled the cigarette between his fingers.

 

“Goodnight Robicheaux.”

 

Vasquez’s head snapped up as he looked between Billy and Goodnight.

 

“You –“

 

Billy raised his eyebrows at him.

 

“ _Really?”_ Vasquez asked in disbelief.

 

“First, last, only,” Billy said.

 

Vasquez’s head whipped between them once more, a slow incredulous smile spreading across his face. And then he was bursting into laughter, shoulders shaking while Goodnight and Billy exchanged an amused glance that had more than a little nostalgia in it. When Goodnight had once asked Billy about his first time, after they’d gotten together, Billy had strung him along in the exact same way.

 

“Are you seriously telling me you’ve only been with _this_ guy?” Vasquez finally asked, straightening up and gesturing towards Goodnight.

 

“He could do a lot worse,” Goodnight huffed. Vasquez really didn’t have to look so surprised. But then Goodnight paused, adding reasonably:

 

“Course I’ve always felt he could do a lot _better_.”

 

“That’s not what I mean,” Vasquez said rolling his eyes at Goodnight. He looked back at Billy with a smile that he was clearly trying not to make look too delighted.

 

“I just mean…I don’t know,” he said shrugging with an amused glint in his eye that was also soft. “Scary, mysterious Billy Rocks…secret boring romantic.”

 

Billy shrugged.

 

“I guess I’m more traditional than I look,” he said, and his eyes had a smile in them as they met Goodnight’s. He passed Goodnight the remains of the cigarette which Goodnight took a final pull of, practically singing his fingertips. The last opiates he’d ever share with Billy. He stubbed the cigarette out on a nearby plate.

 

That seemed to be the unspoken signal to get up. Billy started to clear the plates, both Goodnight and Vasquez arguing him down since it was Billy who cooked more often than not and cooks don’t wash up. That was how any civilized society functioned.

 

Goodnight followed Vasquez towards the kitchen, stopping as Vasquez disappeared around the corner. Goodnight turned to Billy and leaned in, kissing him deeply, tasting rolling paper on his soft lips and sweet smoke over his tongue.

 

“I’ll be in in a minute,” Goodnight murmured and Billy kissed him again, going into their bedroom, Goodnight bringing the plates to the kitchen.

 

Vasquez had already seized the drying towel and Goodnight scoffed at him but went over to the basin of soapy water agreeably enough, picking up a sponge, and started to work on the pots that had been soaking.

 

“So…” he mumbled, and Vasquez glanced at him.

 

“Eduardo Espinosa, huh?” Goodnight said, exaggerating the Spanish ‘r‘. Vasquez just snorted and Goodnight’s lip twitched.

 

“No wonder you’ve been so relaxed about all this,” he said, waving a soapy hand in the general direction of his and Billy’s bedroom to encompass ‘all this’.

 

“Well that’s partly it,” Vasquez said with a shrug, leaning against the counter. “And partly I’m not a total asshole. And partly like I told you…I did already know.”

 

“Yeah that’s another thing,” Goodnight said, eyebrows bunched, having been curious about this. He dunked a pot into rinse water before handing it to Vasquez. “You really guessed? Back in Rose Creek?”

 

“ _S_ _í,”_ Vasquez said, drying the copper pot. “I don’t know if anyone else did but it was obvious enough to me.”

 

Vasquez paused in his motions of drying.

 

“Also Billy told me.”

 

“He did _what_ now?” Goodnight asked, turning to look at Vasquez stunned. It was true that he and Billy had never discussed their policy on telling people, but that was because why in God’s name would they _ever_ tell people? He knew Billy and Vasquez had gotten along back then, but he didn’t know they’d been close enough for _that_ to come up. Goodnight hadn’t even told _Sam_ , although that was mostly because he was so certain Sam would have figured it out anyways.

 

“Easy _hermano_ , it’s not like he was shouting from the rooftops,” Vasquez said. “I asked.”

 

“Did you?” Goodnight asked nonplussed.

 

Vasquez continued to dry the plates Goodnight was passing him, not meeting his eyes.

 

“Like I said, I had already guessed, he didn’t seem like the kind of person to blab, and…and I just wanted his advice about something.” Vasquez ran the towel of the plate and paused.

 

“Someone,” he added a bit more quietly.

 

Goodnight tilted his head at him, and Vasquez let out a breath.

 

“But it didn’t end up mattering.”

 

Goodnight stared at Vasquez who kept drying the plate, his eyes far away. Vasquez’s shoulders were hunched but not tensely, not like he was protecting himself from any pain from the outside. More like it was what was inside that hurt. And Goodnight tried to figure out who Vasquez could have been talking about, who hadn’t made it out with them, who it was that Vasquez had barely been able to talk about the first night he’d ever stayed over when they’d discussed their fallen companions –

 

It didn’t take Goodnight long.

 

“Oh,” he said, hands stilling over a plate in the sudsy water.

 

“Yeah,” Vasquez said tiredly. “Like I said. Doesn’t matter.”

 

Goodnight handed him another plate suddenly feeling weary, weary for Vasquez, weary for himself, for so much loss that had already happened, loss that was going to happen… He wanted to offer some kind of condolences, a way to say sorry, some small gesture to offer Vasquez in return for his many many kindnesses, but what words can you pick for something that didn’t happen?

 

“It…” he began in a quiet voice, and Vasquez glanced over at him.

 

“It doesn’t sound like it didn’t matter,” he said as gently as he could.

 

Vasquez looked at him, his eyes a bit surprised, maybe a small streak of sadness in them, but there was gratitude in them too, and sometimes Goodnight did pick the right words.

 

“Maybe,” Vasquez said softly, taking the last plate that Goodnight handed him, and dried it. “Not like I’ll ever know for sure though, is it?”

 

“Guess not,” Goodnight said, because there was nothing else to say really.

 

Vasquez placed the plate in the wooden drying rack, hanging the towel on a hook. He made as though to leave but then paused.

 

“Night, Goody.”

 

“Night,” replied Goodnight, staring into the empty washbasin as Vasquez left, lost in thought.

 

He dried his hands a bit absently and walked back towards his bedroom with his head spinning. He wondered which was better: not ever knowing what it was you’d lost, or knowing exactly what it was you were _going_ to lose.

 

He walked into the bedroom to see Billy sitting up in bed, already undressed and under the covers. Goodnight took off his own clothes, drinking in the sight. Billy stretched and looked over at Goodnight a little dreamily, and Goodnight felt his heart pang, sorrow and sweetness flooding through it.

 

Definitely better knowing.

 

He walked over and pushed Billy back on the mattress, bending over him, his still-smoky breath tickling Billy’s mouth.

 

“I tell you I love you recently?” he murmured.

 

Billy slid a hand through Goodnight’s hair, his other hand brushing idly against Goodnight’s chest.

 

“This morning,” he said smiling.

 

“Well,” Goodnight said a bit hoarsely, pressing his lips to Billy’s jaw. “That’s because I loved you this morning.”

 

He kissed Billy’s neck and trailed his lips over the column of his throat.

 

“And I’ll love you tomorrow,” he whispered against the skin.

 

Billy shivered in remembrance and Goodnight drew up to look into his eyes.

 

“And I love you right now,” he said. Billy’s grip tightened on the back of his head, pulling Goodnight down to his lips.

 

They kissed languorously, chasing the last lingering traces of smoke on their tongues, breaking off and breathing hard.

 

“I love you,” Goodnight repeated raggedly, his mouth skating over Billy’s. Billy shuddered and ran his hands down Goodnight’s shoulders, Goodnight dropping his head to Billy’s neck.

 

“I love you,” Goodnight breathed, pressing kisses to Billy’s skin, Billy arching beneath him to absorb everything.

 

“I love you…”

 

He ran his hands through Billy’s hair.

 

“I love you…”

 

Fingers brushed over his back lighting a glow in his stomach, heat flickering down his spine.

 

“I love you…”

 

Their mouths sealed together and Goodnight stopped talking. But he ran his hands over Billy’s skin, deepened the kiss, and didn’t stop telling Billy he loved him.

 

 

*

 

 

They said it a lot more these days.

 

“God yes that’s it, oh god I love you,” Goodnight gasped out, rolling his hips over Billy’s, throwing his head back at the teeth that scraped his neck and bit down hard.

 

Billy leaned back on the bed, pulling Goodnight with him. Goodnight reached down between their legs to take Billy in hand, stroking him steadily. Billy’s eyes fell closed in bliss.

 

“Je t’aime,” he grinned, raising an eyebrow at Billy.

 

Billy just snorted and dug his fingers into Goodnight’s hips as Goodnight stroked him to full hardness.

 

“Saranghae,” he crooned, and Billy cracked an eye open at him but it was amused.

 

“You gonna just tell me you love me in every language now?” he asked, raising his hips up needily into Goodnight’s fist.

 

“Yes. But that’s because I love you in every language,” Goodnight said. And then he paused mid-stroke.

 

“Goody?”

 

Goodnight swung a leg off Billy and grabbed a robe.

 

“Don’t go anywhere,” he said, throwing the robe over himself and wrapping it around himself as he exited the room, striding purposefully across the living room to the bedroom opposite theirs, hammering on the door.

 

“ _Sí_.”

 

He opened it up to see Vasquez sitting up in bed and reading something, his glasses on. Vasquez looked up, his mouth opening incredulously and before he could say a word at Goodnight’s disheveled state or the hickies blooming on his neck Goodnight held up his hand.

 

“I will give you twenty dollars and a full bottle of whiskey if you don’t laugh right now and we never talk about this again.”

 

Twenty seconds later he was back in his own room, dropping the robe to the floor and sliding back over Billy’s gloriously naked form.

 

“Te amo,” Goodnight said smugly, grinding down onto Billy.

 

Billy’s eyebrows bunched in confusion, even as his hands were running over Goodnight’s skin, absorbing the roll. Then he looked at their closed door and back to Goodnight and groaned in realization.

 

“Did you _seriously_ just go ask Vasquez how to say ‘I love you’ in Spanish?”

 

“ _Amado_ ,” Goodnight murmured, Korean for ‘maybe’, reaching for their slick and slowly working it over Billy’s throbbing length.

 

Billy moaned, his toes curling, but he persisted in questioning Goodnight’s life choices.

 

“I can’t believe he didn’t laugh you out of the room.”

 

“Well,” Goodnight said where he was sitting astride Billy’s hips. He reached behind him and opened himself up in a cursory manner. “I had to give him my best bottle of whiskey.”

 

“You did not,” Billy snorted, eyes going dark at what he couldn’t see Goodnight doing with his fingers from where he was lying with Goodnight straddling him.

 

“Well no,” Goodnight admitted, rising up on his knees and reaching down between Billy’s legs, lining them up. “I gave him yours.”

 

“You _what_?” Billy yelped out.

 

Goodnight lowered himself onto Billy, taking in a sharp breath at the first blunt stretch and sliding all the way down.

 

“I’ll make it up to you,” he panted while giving his hips a deliberate roll, reveling in the thick slide inside of him.

 

“You’re shameless,” Billy said, groaning as he became fully sheathed inside of Goodnight.

 

“True,” Goodnight said with a grin, gyrating with his hips and making Billy gasp. “But that’s why you love me.”

 

“I do,” Billy said, running his hands up Goodnight’s chest, breathing hard, eyes blown wide, and smiling up at him. “In every language.”

 

 

*

 

 

It wasn’t snowing yet but the ground was crunched over with frost every morning and thin ice was starting to spider its way across the lake. The fire stayed lit all the time now, keeping the warmth in the center of the house which is where its inhabitants gathered more often than not. Most evenings were spent reading, drinking, whittling, playing cards, chatting, or just listening to the creaks and groans of the cabin while the cold wind teased its walls, but never touched the warmth inside.

 

Goodnight was sitting on the couch, Billy stretched out beside him. Billy had been getting drowsier throughout the evening but didn’t seem inclined to the leave the warm room and its company, instead concealing yawns as he leaned further into Goodnight, trying to keep his eyes open but eventually stretching out, dozing as he listened to both the crackle of the fire and Goodnight and Vasquez talking until finally his head was resting on Goodnight’s thigh where he was breathing lightly, totally asleep. He looked so comfortable that Goodnight didn’t have the heart to move him.

 

Vasquez sat in his armchair whittling an animal of some sort. He and Billy had a bit of a competition going. After taking all the taxidermy out of the living room, one or both of them had gotten the idea to replace the décor with carved animals instead: little wooden bears, rabbits and deer carved out of cottonwood, maple caribous, birds traced out of the papery bark of birches and flying over the walls…Billy had carved a peacock at one point and had stuck a spray of pine boughs into it for the tail.

 

“Coyote?” Goodnight guessed, nodding to the animal slowly taking shape under Vasquez’s hands.

 

“ _Thank_ you,” Vasquez said deliberately, working on its muzzle. “Your better half called it a wolf.”

 

“He’s just trying to make you lose focus.”

 

“Because he’s scared I’ll win,” Vasquez agreed, looking at the wooden menagerie that marched over the shelves. Billy was in the lead so far but Vasquez was catching up. Goodnight tried not to think about whether that was because there was less work to do around the house now leaving Vasquez’s hands freer, or because Billy’s hands were getting weaker.

 

“I’ve always found the biggest difference is in the ears,” Goodnight mused. “Coyotes have wider ones. Flatter.”

 

“I hate doing ears,” Vasquez said, shaving away a tendril of wood.

 

“Get this one to do ‘em,” Goodnight said, his hands idling in Billy’s hair.

 

“So he can claim it as one of his?” Vasquez scoffed. “I don’t think so, _hermano_.”

 

Goodnight’s lip twitched as he watched Vasquez hold up the half-carved animal while peering critically at its face, two wild creatures staring each other down. Goodnight had always found there to be a bit of the coyote in Vasquez: keen, rebellious, playful, something of a trickster, but with practicality and resourcefulness running steady under all of the enthusiasm. Anything to stay alive.

 

“Or you could make a bigger one for a wolf,” Goodnight suggested, “Put that one next to it for scale and say it’s a coyote because it’s smaller.”

 

Vasquez laughed. “I don’t know, _hombre_ , I’ve seen some pretty huge coyotes before. It’s easy to mistake, especially when you’re in the dark. Once I was sure I saw a wolf up on a rock watching us, but Sam insisted it was a coyote.”

 

Goodnight glanced over at Vasquez, whose mouth had suddenly gone a bit tight. He knew Vasquez had travelled with Sam for a spell after Rose Creek but that was all the information Vasquez had offered about it until now.

 

“So how is Sam doing?” Goodnight asked carefully, thumbing at a few strands of Billy’s hair.

 

“He’s good,” Vasquez finally said shrugging. “But…”

 

He sighed and tapped his knife against the coyote.

 

“To tell you the truth, _hermano_ , we didn’t really part on the best of terms. We kind of had a fight.”

 

“Oh?” Goodnight asked, a bit surprised. From what he’d seen of Sam and Vasquez back in Rose Creek, they seemed to have gotten on very well. Especially considering one of them was a bounty hunter and the other had a bounty on his head.

 

Although Goodnight supposed that he of all people shouldn’t have been surprised by that, considering his last bounty was currently asleep in his lap.

 

“Actually…” Vasquez looked up at Goodnight with a bit of a wry twist to his mouth. “It was kind of about you.”

 

“ _Me?_ ” Goodnight asked, now openly baffled, trying to think of what he might have said or done to either while preparing for Bogue’s army. He’d still been recuperating in a bed in Rose Creek when he’d said goodbye to them, before they’d both taken off along with Red Harvest.

 

Vasquez kept carving out his coyote. “Well it started with just us chatting.”

 

“It usually does,” Goodnight said.

 

Vasquez gave him a look.

 

“Sorry, I’m listening,” Goodnight said, pretending to button his lips.

 

Vasquez rolled his eyes but his mouth quirked as he kept whittling out some tufts of fur for the coyote’s cheeks.

 

“We were just chatting by the fire one night and started talking about Rose Creek, talking about everyone. And you came up.”

 

Vasquez paused suddenly looking unsure.

 

“Ah,” Goodnight said dryly. “You mean how I ran out on all of you?”

 

“Well,” Vasquez said reluctantly. “Nobody was using those words. But Sam said he could tell you’d been getting more and more on edge, and how he’d seen you like that before.”

 

Vasquez scraped away another piece of wood. “I hope I’m not out of line here, _amigo_ , but he told me a bit about the war and about how you met.”

 

Goodnight nodded to show he was fine with it.

 

“Not details,” Vasquez continued. “But I think he just wanted to give some more context. So he told me a bit more about what you’d been through, what you were like when you met, and -”

 

Vasquez broke off.

 

“And?” Goodnight prompted him.

 

“And I yelled at him,” Vasquez said, and Goodnight was _pretty_ sure the flush on the man’s cheeks was from the fire.

 

“You did what now?” Goodnight didn’t think he’d ever seen Vasquez lose his cool and couldn’t picture the scene.

 

“Well there we were talking about that _loco_ plan of his one minute, and then he’s telling me about you the next minute…and I don’t know, _hermano_ , something about it just made my blood boil. And I said something to him like: ‘so let me get this straight…he was your oldest friend, you knew what he was like, knew what he’d been through, and just when he was finally at peace you go and drag him into your fucking _death mission?’_ ”

 

Vasquez took a breath. “Something like that.”

                                   

“Holy shit,” Goodnight managed. “What did Sam say?”

 

Vasquez rolled his eyes. “Some poetic bullshit about how ‘peace of life isn’t the same thing as peace of mind’. To which I said ‘spoken like someone who needs to tell himself that for his _own_ peace of mind’.”

 

Goodnight whistled. “Bet Sam loved that.”

 

“Yeah not so much,” Vasquez snorted. “He yelled at me.”

 

There was a pause. And then Goodnight said:

 

“He’s terrifying when he yells, isn’t he?”

 

“Holy shit _, hermano_ , he was scarier than my _abuela_.”

 

Both men laughed but then quieted down, not wanting to wake Billy.

 

“Anyways, looking back I might have been angry about some other things too,” Vasquez said with a slight sigh. “I knew you two were together, I wasn’t sure if Sam appreciated that that’s not easy to find. And I guess I was yelling at him about more than just you. But it was what he said about you that set me off I guess.”

 

Goodnight slid his fingers through his partner’s hair thoughtfully, surprised and touched by what Vasquez had shared but also feeling the need to defend Sam as well. It might have been Billy who had reawakened the fire of life inside of Goodnight after the war but it was Sam who had struck the first match, holding it up for Goodnight like a torch, a light for Goodnight to follow when he was still lost in the dark.

 

“You know…flattered as I am to have you defending my honour and all,” Goodnight started. “Thing about Sam is that what made him a good bounty hunter is that he knew what people wanted. What made him a good friend is that he knew what people needed.”

 

Goodnight paused.

 

“And I did need some peace of mind.”

 

Goodnight might have been happy with Billy before Rose Creek. But at peace? Standing in a ring watching Billy face down gun after gun while dancing on a knife’s edge wasn’t peace of mind. It was the torture that Goodnight felt he deserved.

 

He’d had a lot of time to think after Rose Creek, think back on old conversations he’d had with Sam about redemption. And he was pretty sure Rose Creek had been Sam’s way of offering Goodnight some, whether he thought Goody needed redeeming or not. Sam had already told him long ago that Goodnight had nothing to redeem himself _for._ But both of them knew people couldn’t make those kinds of calls for each other.

 

“And did you get it?” Vasquez asked him, looking at Goodnight whose hands were still sliding through Billy’s hair. “Some peace of mind?”

 

Goodnight looked down at Billy’s sleeping face, his steady breaths, and while it made Goodnight’s chest clench, the pain of it was sturdy.

 

“I reckon so,” Goodnight said quietly.

 

Vasquez nodded, a line between his eyebrows. He seemed to deflate a little, but a muscle ticked in his jaw.

 

“Still think it was a cold fucking thing to do though,” he muttered with feeling, picking up his carving again.

 

“Yeah well,” Goodnight said shrugging. “Cold people don’t usually start out that way.”

 

Vasquez looked over at him a bit thoughtfully.

 

“What?”

 

Vasquez had a slight smile playing at his lips.

 

“I don’t think you’ve ever been a cold person in your life, _guero_.”

 

Goodnight’s mouth ticked up as he looked down clearing his throat a little.

 

“Yeah well unfortunately we can’t all be me,” he said sagely.

 

Vasquez snorted but he was still smiling when he turned back to his whittling and began scraping away shavings of wood again, settling back in his chair. And Goodnight wondered when it was he’d started thinking of that one as ‘Vasquez’s chair.’

 

A smile was still tugging at Goodnight’s lips as he continued to stroke Billy’s hair. Probably around the same time he’d started to picture Vasquez not just as Billy’s friend but as Goodnight’s friend too.

 

 

*

 

 

 

Vasquez was talking about leaving soon.

 

“Just because it hasn’t snowed a lot yet doesn’t mean it’s not going to,” he said over the kitchen table one morning. “If I’m ever going to get going it should be when I still can, and can still get out of the mountains.”

 

“You…” Goodnight was stunned as he looked up from his mug of coffee. All he could think of to say was: “You want to get going?”

 

“It’s not that I don’t like it here, _hermano_ ,” Vasquez said gently. “But if we get snowed in it means I’ll just be in your hair until spring.”

 

Goodnight traced the rim of his mug, trying not to let how stunned he felt show. “You haven’t exactly felt ‘in our hair’ Vasquez.” Vasquez felt as sturdy a part of the scenery as the mountain itself at this point.

 

Vasquez’s lips twitched. “I appreciate that,” he said. But his shoulders looked resolute. Goodnight glanced between him and Billy, who didn’t really look all that surprised. Maybe Billy had figured Vasquez only intended to stay temporarily. Or more likely Vasquez and Billy had already discussed this without Goodnight there.

 

“Well,” Goodnight said, clearing his throat. “If you’re sure.”

 

“I’m sure,” Vasquez said quietly, his eyes flicking between Goodnight and Billy. “I’ve already taken up too much of your time.”

 

Goodnight realized Vasquez meant how much time Goodnight and Billy had left and he sighed, feeling a mixture of emotions. Billy was still managing decently but the doctor had said the end would come on in a rush. He knew Vasquez wouldn’t have been at all bothered by the prospect of seeing Billy at his weakest, but…

 

Goodnight looked at Billy who was silently drinking his coffee. And he realized that maybe it was Billy who would have been bothered. Billy had his pride and maybe he wanted to keep this as an untarnished pocket of time. So much of his and Goodnight’s life had been just them, and he and Goodnight had seen each other at their worst moments. Maybe he wanted to keep the worst moment of all between them too.

 

“Alright,” Goodnight said.

 

Later Goodnight was out on the back porch and sitting on the porch swing. It had been one of Vasquez’s carpentry experiments. The hanging bench wasn’t quite as nimbly crafted as some of his other projects, but Goodnight supposed that such a solid person was probably better at building things from the ground up.

 

But the bench hung evenly and didn’t even creak as Goodnight pushed himself off the floor of the porch, looking out at the lake which glittered under the sun, the frost still thick on the ground.

 

The porch door swung open and Goodnight could tell by the tall shadow that it was Vasquez.

 

Vasquez walked out and looked across at the lake too, his hands in his pocket. Eventually he seemed to sigh as he leaned against the porch rail, turning to look at Goodnight on the swing. His eyes flicked up to where the swing was attached to the porch rafters.

 

“I should have given that a double loop,” he said, casting a critical eye over his own handiwork. He glanced around the rest of the deck. “Actually I should have redone the floorboards too. Didn’t do enough on this side of the house.”

 

“Yeah Billy and I have been meaning to talk to you about that,” Goodnight said in a serious voice. When Vasquez glanced at him, Goodnight gave him a deadpan look.

 

“We really don’t think you’ve been pulling your full weight around here.”

 

Vasquez burst out laughing. Goodnight chuckled as he leaned back on the swinging bench.

 

“Ah _dios m_ _ío, cabron_ ,” Vasquez finally said, drumming his fingers on the porch railing. “Gonna miss you.”

 

“I’ll miss you too,” Goodnight said quietly, meaning it. But he wasn’t going to kick and scream about it. There was something he’d known the moment they’d found out about Billy. Vasquez coming and going might have changed a lot of things. But it didn’t change the fact that Goodnight was going to be alone by the end of all of this.

 

“If it makes you feel any better, Billy says I’m to stay for Christmas,” Vasquez said.

 

Christmas…Goodnight realized with a jolt that it was in a few days. They hadn’t planned anything. Goodnight and Billy had spent more than a few Christmasses on the road, but that didn’t mean Goodnight hadn’t usually found some way to make it festive. Although realistically that usually meant just tying some kind of decoration into Billy’s hair until the man glared at him, both of them drinking a little more than they would on a normal night, and falling asleep while Goodnight hummed Christmas carols. If they found a town soon after, presents might be exchanged.

 

Sometimes they found themselves in a hotel or saloon on Christmas Eve, and if they were especially lucky it would be decorated by an enthusiastic innkeeper or the patrons would sing carols. Once Goodnight had swiped a sprig of mistletoe from the bar. Later that night he’d hung it up in their room and slowly pulled Billy towards him.

 

“You know what mistletoe is?” Goodnight had asked, their noses brushing in the dark room.

 

“I do,” Billy had said with a smile. “But I think you’d better explain it to me again.”

 

“Well then listen very carefully,” Goodnight had murmured, sliding his arms around Billy and kissing him. Billy’s lips had curved up even more where they were pressed against Goodnight’s as he kissed him back.

 

They stood swaying in the middle of the room, not inclined to move anywhere else, and it was the longest time both had ever spent just simply kissing anyone in their lives.

 

It would be nice to be settled somewhere for Christmas, Goodnight thought, already scanning the trees around them and wondering if they had enough paper around to make a chain for decoration.

 

“Christmas sounds good,” he said to Vasquez.

 

They stayed out on the porch in silence for a while, not too chilly yet since the porch caught a lot of the sun. Eventually Goodnight looked up at him curiously.

 

“What are you going to do after?”

 

Vasquez shrugged. “Might go back to the New Mexico territories. Spend winter in some more civilized temperatures.”

 

“What about Old Mexico?” Goodnight asked.

 

Vasquez shook his head. “Don’t think so. My life hasn’t been there for a while now. But after the winter I…well I’ve been thinking of heading over to Kansas actually.”

 

He’d said it casually but Goodnight wasn’t fooled.

 

“Sam?” he asked.

 

“He’s still there,” Vasquez said. “Or at least he said he would be. And I don’t know…I feel bad about how we left things last time.”

 

“He’ll be glad to see you,” Goodnight said with conviction.

 

Vasquez raised a skeptical eyebrow at him. “I said some pretty nasty stuff to him, _hermano_.”

 

Goodnight’s lip twitched. “His best friend was a Confederate soldier whose family owned slaves and who was shooting at his side not even a week before they met. Sam doesn’t hold a grudge.”

 

Vasquez huffed out a quiet laugh. “Maybe you’re right.”

 

“No maybe about it.”

 

Vasquez looked over at him, suddenly looking uneasy about something.

 

“But what about you?”

 

“What about me what?” Goodnight asked feeling wary.

 

Vasquez hesitated, eyes flicking towards the house before looking back at Goodnight. “What are _you_ going to do? You know…afterwards.”

 

After Billy died.

 

Goodnight felt like he’d swallowed ice but he met Vasquez’s eyes, narrowing his own.

 

“I haven’t thought about it. And I don’t want to until I have to. The only thing I’m thinking about until then is Billy.”

 

“Hey fair enough,” Vasquez said holding up his hands placatingly. “I don’t blame you.”

 

“So why’d you even ask?” Goodnight muttered to the floor.

 

“Because, _hermano_ ,” Vasquez started, “I just don’t want you to do anything stupid.”

 

“Who, me?” Goodnight asked humourlessly, not knowing what Vasquez was going on about.

 

“Goody.”

 

Goodnight looked up to see Vasquez looking seriously at him.

 

“Don’t do anything stupid.”

 

Goodnight suddenly realized what it was Vasquez was saying.

 

“You understand me?” Vasquez asked, lowering his voice.

 

Goodnight stared at him as he nodded automatically and Vasquez gave him a sharp look before turning back to the lake, his posture tense.

 

But truthfully Goodnight didn’t think Vasquez had much to worry about. Goodnight hadn’t been able to pull the trigger for a while now.

 

He didn’t see why it should be any different if the person he was pointing a gun at was himself.

 

 

*

 

 

“Okay now open ours.”

 

There was a tearing of parcel paper and Vasquez burst out laughing.

 

“Seriously?” he asked looking up at them, his eyes twinkling.

 

“Until you can sing worth a damn you should stick to that,” Billy said.

 

“Once I learn how to use it,” Vasquez snorted. He opened up the wooden case, eyes lighting up. “Oh but I’m definitely going to learn though.”

 

He picked up the solid silver harmonica they’d found in the village, admiring it as it shone bright in the merry blaze of the fireplace. He put it to his lips and gave it an experimental blow.

 

“There you go, you sound much better already,” Billy said dryly, but his lips were twitching.

 

“Turn it over,” Goodnight said.

 

Vasquez flipped the harmonica over and read the inscription on the back, suddenly going very quiet. He swallowed and touched the engraving with his finger. Goodnight had chosen the words and Billy had carved them out, and the two looked at each other, pleased with the reaction.

 

Vasquez looked up. “ _De veras? Hijo de puta,_ you two trying to make me cry or something?”

 

“You going to?” Goodnight asked delighted.

 

“I already told you Mexicans are emotional!” Vasquez burst out with a laugh, but it choked off halfway through.

 

“Ach, _maldito,”_ he swore as he got up and went to go collect himself under the pretense of refilling his glass of whiskey.

 

“I don’t know, Goody, I don’t think he likes it,” Billy said in a loud whisper.

 

“Told you we should have gone with an accordion,” Goodnight said, stretching an arm around Billy’s shoulders and Billy leaned into him.

Vasquez came back composed, this time holding the whiskey bottle and topping them each off. He set it down and reached for a package beneath the Christmas tree he and Goodnight had chopped down for the house a few days earlier. He slid the package towards both of them.

 

“Here.”

 

“For us?” Billy asked.

 

“Mmm.”

 

“You didn’t have to get us a damn thing,” Goodnight protested. Vasquez had already done far too much for them.

 

“Yeah but where’s the fun in that?” Vasquez said with a shrug.

 

“You wanna open it?” Billy asked Goodnight.

 

“Do the honours, darlin’,” Goodnight said.

 

Billy tore off the paper and his mouth fell open. For all that he was much more animated behind closed doors, it still took a _lot_ to catch him visibly by surprise and Goodnight tilted his neck to get a better look.

 

A pair of wooden ducks were nestled in the paper, facing each other. They were neatly carved and a ribbon adorned both of their bills.

 

“How the hell did you know about this?” Billy managed to say, his mouth still open.

 

“This one happened to mention it,” Vasquez said nodding at Goodnight. “And I remembered because I liked the idea of it.”

 

“When did I ever talk about this?” Goodnight asked, looking at the carvings and recognizing them for what they were, amazed.

 

Vasquez lifted an eyebrow at him.

 

“Oh I don’t know, was it when you were talking while we were setting up the woodshed? Or when you were talking while we built the smokehouse? Or was it when we were hunting on the other side of the mountain and we didn’t shoot anything because you were still talking? Or was it when we were chopping wood for ten hours straight and somehow you were _still? Fucking? Talking?”_

Vasquez turned to Billy.

 

“Did you know he literally _never_ shuts up? Especially about you? _Maldito_ he has a problem I swear, he’ll start on one subject but it always comes back to you.”

 

He put on a horribly garbled approximation of a southern drawl: “‘Vasquez when did you learn English, oh really, do you wanna hear how Billy learned English? Hey Vasquez pass me the water oh hey did I tell you about the time Billy took someone out using only a water flask? Look at that tree, Vasquez, did you know that’s Billy’s favourite kind of tree? Nice animal carving, Vasquez, by the way did you know in Billy’s country people traditionally give carved wooden ducks to couples?’”

 

Vasquez shook his head while stretching. “But to answer your question, _Cuchillo_ , he mentioned something about carved ducks once and that’s how I heard and it sounded like a nice idea. But I don’t really know what it means though, or why it’s ducks.”

 

“They use these ducks because they mate for life,” Billy said quietly, brushing one of the ducks’ wooden bills. “They say when…when one dies the other mourns.”

 

Goodnight looked down, blinking rapidly. Billy reached up and rubbed circles into the back of his neck, slowly working his way down Goodnight’s spine.

 

“Oh,” Vasquez said, suddenly looking uncertain as to whether this had been a good idea.

 

Billy looked up at him. “Did he tell you about who traditionally carves them?”

 

Vasquez shook his head and Goodnight looked back up, clearing his throat.

 

“I don’t think I know that part either,” Goodnight admitted hoarsely.

 

“Someone is specially selected to carve them,” Billy said. “First he has to be an honourable man. Second he has to be a good friend of the people they’re for.”

 

Billy smiled as he looked at Vasquez. “You’re both, _amigo_.”

 

Vasquez looked at Billy and then at Goodnight who nodded, still a little too worked up to talk. Billy held up one of the ducks and made it nod at Vasquez too, his mouth twitching.

 

“ _Hijo de puta,_ stop trying to make me _cry_!” Vasquez burst out. “What the fuck is wrong with you two? _Jesu Christo y Santa Maria da Costa,”_ he grumbled.

 

Goodnight snorted and got up, clapping Vasquez on the shoulder, trying to put a lot of feeling into the motion before going into the kitchen. He didn’t need anything in there but something about Billy’s comment of ducks mourning had gotten to him. He just needed a moment. Before going in he saw Billy lean forward to give Vasquez a hug and he heard Vasquez make a joke about how they were now officially tied in their carved animals competition.

 

When he came back out Billy was setting the ducks up on the mantelpiece, turning them towards each other. Goodnight knew that in his people’s tradition those ducks were for married couples. And he also knew that when the ducks were facing each other it meant that the marriage was in a good place, that it was at peace. Despite everything, despite dying, Billy still felt like he was at peace and still wanted to be with Goodnight even at the end of the road.

 

Goodnight didn’t know if it was possible for a heart to clench and swell at the same time, but that’s what his did as he walked over to Billy to turn him around and kiss him gently but meaningfully. He felt Billy still for the smallest moment in surprise, but then he was humming into the kiss, reaching up to trace Goodnight’s jaw, the curve of his lips making Goodnight’s turn up too, the same way he’d kissed him so many Christmases ago.

 

They broke apart, and looking around Goodnight realized that everyone in the room was slightly misty eyed. Three grown men, reduced to tears by a harmonica and a pair of wooden ducks.

 

“So who wants another drink?”

 

“ _Gracias a dio,_ me.”

 

“Me too.”

 

Goodnight sat back down against the couch reaching for his glass of whiskey. Billy walked over too and instead of sitting beside Goody he sat between Goodnight’s legs, leaning back comfortably against Goodnight’s chest. Goodnight slid an arm around his stomach and dipped his head to nuzzle the crook of Billy’s neck.

 

Vasquez was smiling at them and Goodnight suddenly realized with a jolt what had surprised Billy at first when Goodnight had kissed him. Because in over fifteen years that had been the first and only time they’d ever kissed in front of someone else.

 

Goodnight had felt so many lasts with Billy lately. Last opium cigarette, last Christmas…

 

Tightening his arm around Billy, Goodnight felt a smile of his own coming on. Because even here, at the end of the road, in a year surrounded by lasts…

 

It was just nice to know they could still have some firsts.

 

 

*

 

 

 

Vasquez took off a week later on New Year’s Day. No one seemed particularly inclined to acknowledge 1885, knowing full well that one of them wouldn’t be seeing the rest of it out.

                                                        

Vasquez said his goodbyes to Billy first, staying in his room for a long time while Goodnight gave them their space. By the time Vasquez came out his eyes were very red. He picked up his hat and looked at Goodnight with a nod, and Goodnight stood up to walk Vasquez to the stables.

 

Their boots crunched over the light layer of snow as they walked, breath puffing out in spirals. Vasquez was in warm travelling clothes, with even more layers of furs packed on his horse. They’d offered him Billy’s horse to carry more supplies but he insisted he didn’t want to be weighed down. If he rode quickly he’d be out of the mountains in a few days, beating any weather that was heading their way.

 

Goodnight had just thrown on his woolen grey coat, fine for desert nights but too thin for mountain winters, and he stuffed his fingers into his pockets while he waited outside the stable for Vasquez to load up his horse.

 

Finally Vasquez came out and they looked at each other.

 

“I don’t really know what to say,” Goodnight admitted, breath visible in the chilly air.

 

“Yeah? And how are you coping with that?” Vasquez asked.

 

Goodnight thought for a moment.

 

“Badly,” he said finally with a laugh, and Vasquez laughed too as they stepped forward into a hug.

 

When they pulled back Goodnight was expecting Vasquez to get back on his horse but Vasquez seemed to be deliberating something. His brow was furrowed and he kept biting his lip like there was something he wanted to say but was trying to work out before he did.

 

“Look I didn’t know when to tell you this. But I heard you and Billy talking a couple months ago…and it’s not that I was eavesdropping but I did hear what you were both talking about so I…I mean I know I had no right, but –“

 

“Vasquez.”

 

Vasquez had a troubled expression, still looking down.

 

“It’s just that…Billy was right, the ground _was_ getting colder. But I agree with you too. You shouldn’t be doing something like that while he’s still alive.”

 

Goodnight suddenly felt his heart hammering, remembering the conversation with Billy that had filled him with so much frantic dread. He watched Vasquez who swallowed as he looked down at the snow.

 

“You know how if you head down to the lake and turn west, after a while you hit that clump of birch trees?” he asked quietly.

 

Goodnight nodded and Vasquez looked up at him, eyes gone a bit red again. But his voice was clear as he said:

 

“You’ll have to fill it in yourself. But if you want it…it’s already dug.”

 

Goodnight stood there staring at him. The wind was biting through his coat but he didn’t even feel it. Because this man who didn’t owe either of them a thing had done so much for them already. And in his final kindness he’d dug Billy’s grave as well.

 

Goodnight couldn’t even speak his throat had gone so tight, and his heart was overwhelmed and full of too many things. So he just held out his hand and Vasquez took it in his own, and they stood like that for a moment in the snow.

 

Vasquez got up on his horse, making sure everything was in order and started to turn it around to go.

 

“Vasquez,” Goodnight said suddenly, sniffing quickly and wiping his eyes. Vasquez looked down at him and Goodnight managed a crooked smile as he looked up at Vasquez on his horse.

 

“It would be an honour if it was your granddaddy who killed my granddaddy.”

 

Vasquez broke out into a wide grin. He gave Goodnight a wink and tipped his hat at him. And flicking the reins of his horse he wheeled lightly around and took off at a steady walk across the clearing, whistling an off-key tune that trailed behind him as he disappeared down the mountain path.

 

Goodnight stood there a moment longer and then sighed, turning around to head back to the cabin and going back inside.

 

It felt a little quieter he thought, walking past Vasquez’s chair. But it wasn’t an empty silence.

 

He stopped in the kitchen and saw Billy outside on the back porch, hands in his pockets and staring out at the lake. And Goodnight realized what felt different. When they’d first arrived at the house it had felt like just a place to die. Now it felt like a place they could actually _live_.

 

For however long they had left.

 

Goodnight went outside to the porch, stepping behind Billy and sliding his arms around his waist from the back, resting his chin on Billy’s shoulder.

 

“Happy New Year, Sweetheart,” he said quietly.

 

Billy seemed to let out a breath as he placed his hand briefly over Goodnight’s. And then he was turning around in Goodnight’s arms and hugging him back as they stood there wrapped together on the porch, the sun still rising over the sparkling lake, the breeze sending spirals of snow buffeting around them.

 

“Happy New Year, Goody.”

 

 

 

 


	3. Goodnight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the third and final part, and I just wanted to say thank you to anyone who's reading this. I know a super long fic about death doesn't really scream "read me" haha but this one was a bit of a cathartic necessity for me and it means a lot to me that you guys would still read/comment on it. So thanks very much again. And I promise I will do fluff next haha

 

 

 

 

It snowed a week after Vasquez left. Real, proper snow that blanketed the mountain in sparkling rolling drifts that reached as high as the cabin’s porch. One night they were going to bed surrounded by an empty frosty chill, and in the morning they were waking up to the blinding dazzle of white as the sun rose over the snowdrifts sending light pouring into the cabin.

 

Outside it was like a storybook as Goodnight dug a path from the cabin to the stable, covering the horses with extra blankets and making sure the water in their buckets hadn’t frozen over. The snow came up to his waist but was light and gave easily beneath his shovel as he tossed pile after sparkling pile of snow out to the side, some of it catching on the breeze as it drifted back and tickled his face in gentle chilly pinpricks.

 

When Billy woke up he came out to sit on the front porch while Goody worked, wrapped up a coat. He gazed around the front yard in awe, looking at what a different world it had become when coated over by white. His eyes danced over the evergreens whose boughs were weighed down by white, the clumps of snow standing out bright against the dark green branches.

 

Goodnight walked up onto the porch, stamping the snow off his boots and rubbing his gloved hands together before Billy was placing a steaming mug of coffee in them.

 

“Thought you said it snowed in Korea?” Goodnight asked, taking a scalding sip, mouth curving up around his mug as he looked at Billy’s dazzled expression.

 

“It does, but it doesn’t pile up,” Billy explained. “Melts in a day.”

 

“That’s a shame,” Goodnight said, taking another burning sip before quoting: “What good is the warmth of summer without the cold of winter to give it sweetness?”

 

Billy’s eyes crinkled in amusement. “Okay, Louisiana boy, you’re no expert either.”

 

“I have spent some time up North thank you very much,” Goodnight said. “Seen my fair share of snow.”

 

Billy raised an eyebrow at him and Goodnight’s lip quirked.

 

“But fine, not like this.”

 

Billy grinned and shook his head, looking around again at the wintery vista, the sunny shimmer of the snow somehow making everything seem brighter, every detail sharper. He looked like a painting as he leaned against the porch whose wood had gone dark, damp by snow. And Goodnight let himself look, drinking in the calm of Billy’s eyes and the curve of his mouth as he gazed out at the trees.

 

Goodnight wandered back into the yard to get his shovel which he’d stuck in a snowdrift, running his hands along the line of the path he’d shovelled, letting some of the snow powder out and tumble down. It stuck to his woollen gloves and he found himself biting back a grin.

 

“You know what the _best_ part is about snow though?” he asked conversationally.

 

He didn’t wait for Billy to answer, and he spun around sending a snowball flying straight into Billy’s face.

 

Billy stood immobile on the porch, still holding his own mug while clumps of snow slid down his face. He delicately lifted a hand up to wipe the snow out of his eyes.

 

“Goodnight Robicheaux, you have no idea what you’ve just –“

 

Another snowball exploded against his face.

 

Goodnight clutched his stomach, doubled over laughing at Billy. And when he finally straightened up it was only to be pelted with three snowballs in quick succession, one on his chest, one to his neck, and one landing square between his eyes.

 

He gasped and wiped the snow out of his eyes and had just enough time to see Billy scooping up another handful of snow off the porch railing and hurling it against Goodnight’s chest.

 

“You think you can out _throw_ me?” he said indignantly. “ _Me?”_

Billy launched two more snowballs in a row that smacked into Goodnight’s ribs.

 

“I’m a knife-thrower!” he yelled his face brimming with mischief. “It’s what I _do_.”

Goodnight pelted another snowball towards Billy who ducked behind the post of the porch.

 

“I was a sharpshooter,” Goodnight shouted, packing another snowball into his gloves. “It’s about patience, precision, and –“

 

Billy peeked his head out from behind the post.

 

“ _Aim!”_

The snowball burst against Billy’s forehead.

 

“Stop aiming for my face!”

 

“Stop being a chicken and get off the porch!”

 

“Oh you want me to get off?”

 

“Well when don’t I?” Goodnight dodged the snowball Billy hurled his way.

 

“You asked for it.”

 

Billy came running out at him with a gleeful determined expression as he scooped up snow, coming after Goodnight who ran back down the shoveled path, feeling snowball after snowball burst out over his back.

 

“Backstabber!” Goodnight hollered, whirling around and launching another one Billy who dodged it easily.

 

“Nice aim, sharpshooter,” Billy yelled with a wicked grin.

 

Another snowball hit him square in the face.

 

“Nice job reading feints, knife-thrower,” Goodnight laughed.

 

Billy swore at him but he was laughing as snow dripped down his face. He scooped up another snowball and launched it at Goodnight, quickly packing another together.

 

They dipped and darted up and down the shoveled path, hurling both snowballs and taunts as they continued to pelt each other gleefully, laughing and yelling with every hit. Eventually Billy gave up snowballs altogether and was charging at Goodnight with a handful of snow that he stuffed down the back of Goodnight’s collar.

 

“ _Jesus,_ ” Goodnight squawked, contorting himself as though he could stop the icy slide down his back. “Oh that feels _awful_ oh my god, Billy, _why?”_

 

Billy cackled and Goodnight was whirling around and tackling Billy into a snowdrift.

 

“No more than you deserve,” he said, laughing as he shoved Billy deeper into the snow. Billy yelped but he was laughing too as he struggled, every thrash of his body sending snow cascading down onto him.

 

“Oh god, Goody, let up,” Billy said laughing, sputtering through a mouthful of snow.

 

“Not a chance, darling,” Goodnight said grinning as he looked down at Billy, red-faced and laughing and wiping snow out of his eyes. And Goodnight ducked down to kiss him, their teeth clicking because neither could stop smiling.

 

They broke off panting.

 

“Inside?”

 

“Inside.”

 

Goodnight pulled Billy to his feet, laughing at the damp rumpled state of him, sure that he himself was no better off.

 

When they reached the porch Goodnight stopped and stared at the threshold and then back to Billy thoughtfully. His lip twitched.

 

“Indulge me a moment.”

 

And then he did what he couldn’t bring himself to do when they’d first arrived which was to slide an arm around Billy’s back, scoop up his legs, and carry Billy over the threshold and into their house, Billy protesting and cursing and laughing the entire time.

 

Goodnight had already lit the fireplace that morning and he carried Billy over to the carpet in front of it, trying not to think about how light Billy felt.

 

He deposited Billy on the carpet on the carpet, gazing down at him, and his breath caught because Billy was just so _beautiful_ and there was no other word for it. He was still laughing, flakes clinging to his lashes, his face dripping from snow that was starting to melt from the heat of the fire beside them. He was so bright and so goddamn _open_ and Goodnight marveled that he was the one allowed to see Billy like this.

 

He looked so alive it hurt.

 

“In my whole life I’ve never seen anything as beautiful as you,” Goodnight murmured, fingers trailing down Billy’s jaw.

 

Billy swallowed and looked up Goodnight, his eyes very very bright as he slid a hand through Goodnight’s hair, his other hand curling into the damp fabric of Goodnight’s jacket.

 

And they began to kiss in front of the fireplace and couldn’t stop, kissing while Goodnight leaned back so Billy could push Goodnight’s jacket off of him and throw it somewhere in a corner, kissing while Goodnight reached for the buttons on Billy’s own, kissing while undoing each other’s shirts, breaking out into goosebumps at the air on their wet skin, kissing as they moved closer to the heat of the fire, kissing while they pulled their shirts off and ran their hands over each other, shivering at more than just each other’s icy touch. Their tongues were sliding and their teeth were clicking, hands went to belt buckles, and they only stopped kissing long enough to shuck their pants off and throw them out of the way. Billy leaned up on his elbows where he lay in front of the fire, lips red and flushed, legs parted in invitation.

 

“God, you’re a vision,” Goodnight breathed as he crawled between Billy’s legs, staring at Billy’s face, taking every last bit of him in.

 

Billy leaned up more, eyes softening as he placed a finger beneath Goodnight’s chin, slowly drawing him closer to his face.

 

Their mouths brushed.

 

“You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” Billy murmured.

 

Goodnight breathed out a sigh of want, leaning forward to kiss Billy properly, his weight pushing Billy back onto the carpet, their hips rubbing damply together. They were still cold from their snow fight outside, and every cool touch of fingertips sent a shudder through them, but they arched into it feeling sparks start to scatter through their bodies, a mixture of cold and heat that had both gasping.

 

“You feel so good, Billy, so good, my god I can’t believe how good you feel,” Goodnight moaned as he rubbed and touched and caressed Billy anywhere he could reach, the blaze of the fireplace setting a glow against his back which had started to tingle as it heated up.

 

Billy groaned in response, canting his hips up towards Goodnight’s, and Goodnight could actually feel Billy harden against him which only caused Goodnight to swell, rutting down into him.

 

“Billy, Billy…”

 

Billy was breathing hard. And so quickly Goodnight couldn’t even process it, he was being flipped onto his back, Billy rolling on top of him. Hip hips were thrusting forward in a slow roll and he pushed Goodnight’s hair away from his forehead, dropping a kiss to Goodnight’s temple, lips trailing a line down Goodnight’s face and ending at Goodnight’s mouth, their lips parting in a slow, syrupy kiss as Billy gripped Goodnight’s hair harder, hips pumping down over Goodnight’s.

 

“Goddamn, Billy,” Goodnight grunted, running his hands down Billy’s back, squeezing his hips, pulling him harder against him. He could feel Billy hard and hot and leaking against his hipbone already, and the feeling sent him arching up into Billy’s touch.

 

They continued to thrust against each other in front of the fire, hands running over each other, their skin becoming hot to the touch. Only when their hands were completely warm again did Billy reach between them, taking the hard lines of them in his rough palm, slowly jerking them together, his thumb rubbing nimbly over the tips.

 

“Oh god, Billy, yes –“

 

Goodnight threw his head back moaning and Billy’s eyes went dark as he dragged his hand over them both, slow and hot, building a languid rhythm, and their gasps of each other’s names mingled between their lips like breath.

 

Goodnight lifted a hand to slide two of his fingers between Billy’s parted lips, and Billy sucked them into his mouth, looking down at Goodnight through hooded eyes as he curled his tongue against and around Goodnight’s knuckles, causing Goodnight to release a few bursts of clear fluid against Billy’s stomach.

 

“Make ‘em good and wet now, ‘cause they’re for you,” Goodnight said in a lusty growl.

 

Billy moaned and hollowed his cheeks, sucking Goodnight’s fingers for all he was worth.

 

Goodnight was panting as he withdrew his spit-slick fingers from Billy’s mouth, dragging the pads of his fingers against the man’s lips before reaching behind Billy and slowly circling his entrance, sliding the two digits deep inside.

 

Billy shuddered and dropped his head to the crook of Goodnight’s neck, breathing him in and thrusting against his body all the more urgently.

 

Goodnight slid his fingers in and out of Billy and felt Billy keening against his neck as Billy continued to jerk them together, the two of them pressed and throbbing together in his warm broad palm which he stroked in time with Goodnight’s fingers, as in tune and in rhythm as they always were.

 

Goodnight slid his free hand into Billy’s hair which was still wet from melted snow and he found himself gasping at the feeling. Fingers of one hand buried in the cool dampness of Billy’s hair, fingers of the other hand surrounded by Billy’s tight heat, Billy himself still braced over him, bracketing Goodnight with the roll of his skin and stroking them hard. Goodnight loved him down to his _bones_.

 

“Oh god, Billy, Billy _please_ –“

 

Billy clenched around him, shifting his weight a little onto his elbow as he jerked them together faster, his breath hot against Goodnight’s neck.

 

“God yes, Billy, come on, I want it.”

 

Billy let out a low moan, as he dragged his head off of Goodnight’s shoulder, leaning up dragging them fast and desperately together, the slick slapping sounds of skin on skin filling the room.

 

“Goody,” he kept breathing over and over, hair slipping over his shoulders which were straining above Goodnight, his chest slick with sweat, and melted snow, so unreal and so present it made Goodnight’s head spin. Goodnight suddenly crooked his fingers inside of him and it was like lighting a fuse as Billy gasped, his hand stuttering.

 

“Come on now, come on,” Goodnight got out, sliding his fingers in a hard, brutal pace, panting as he looked up at Billy, every straining, glorious bit of him.

 

Billy was rubbing them together so fast his hands were almost a blur, lips parted as he gazed down at Goodnight in awe.

 

Goodnight surged up to kiss him, and something about the shift in angle caused their swollen tips to brush in Billy’s palm, and then Billy was letting out a cry into Goodnight’s mouth as he came shooting over them in hot bursts that coated his hand, coated Goodnight’s tip, and when Goodnight felt the hot pulse against him and start to slide wet down his throbbing length he was moaning, his entire body gave a jerk, and he coming hard, bucking and shuddering and pulsing into Billy’s hand which squeezed him and stroked him and milked every last drop.

 

They kissed through it, mouths working ferociously as their bodies shuddered, fingers grasping hard at each other, tongues sliding desperately, rocking together, pulses hammering. Eventually their hearts started to slow, as did their lips which started to rub more pliantly together, hot and languid, their tongues slowing to a leisurely slide, tips teasing together.

 

Eventually they drew back, Goodnight falling bonelessly back to the rug, warm and limp all over, his chest rising and falling as he drew breath. Billy eased himself down beside him, their sides pressing, legs tangled, his hand running over Goodnight’s chest, marveling at him. Goodnight turned his head to look quietly at him and Billy smiled slow and sweet, leaning forward to kiss Goodnight yet again. It started out hazy and dreamy and then Goodnight felt Billy’s pulse begin to quicken again, and Billy start to stiffen against Goodnight’s thigh.

 

“Seriously, Rocks?” Goodnight asked with a breathy, incredulous laugh. Goodnight was down for the count but it appeared Billy wasn’t done yet.

 

Billy grinned at him and just rolled on top of him again, straddling his hips. “You tired?”

 

“More like debilitated,” Goodnight said.

 

Billy hummed, running his fingers down his chest until he was taking himself in hand, shuddering at the close of his fist around him, still sensitive but somehow hard _again_.

 

“Too tired to lie there and let me come on you?” Billy asked, in a low voice.

 

“…Definitely not.”

 

And Goodnight watched with eyes like saucers as Billy’s hand began to move quicker over himself, reaching back for another orgasm that was apparently still lingering inside of him. He looked like he was doing just fine by himself but that didn’t stop Goodnight from leaning up on his elbows, looking up at Billy through his lashes and whispering filthy encouragements to him until Billy was panting and moaning and shooting out hot stripes of seed across Goodnight’s chest.

 

When Billy finally lowered himself down onto Goodnight for the second and last time, he was shaking and quivering, heart pounding, but his fingers traced idly over Goodnight’s skin and he sucked languidly at Goodnight’s neck like they had all the time in the world. And just this once, Goodnight let his eyes fall closed and let himself believe it was true.

 

 

*

 

There wasn’t much to do in the house in the winter, but that was fine, since neither seemed to want to do anything but stay glued together. Whether they were playing cards, making love, chatting animatedly, reading quietly, or curled up in front of the fire, both were reluctant to let the other out of their sight. Being on this side of the new year, there was the feeling of time running out and heading steadily towards the end.

 

Goodnight could understand why Billy had wanted this final pocket of time to be for just them together. They had a limited number of seconds left and neither wanted to be apart for a single one of them.

 

Because Billy was dying. If it hadn’t been evident before, it was evident now. He was thin, too thin. Billy had always been compact, muscular, quick strength ready to spring out in the space of a breath.

 

Now he moved slowly. He was stooped and held himself wearily. What was happening to him on the inside was finally reaching the outside, and the pain he was in was finally starting to show.

 

He still kept taking Goodnight to bed, fucking him with a burning intensity, putting his back into it as much as he could. They had always swapped roles in bed, neither really having a significant preference for who was doing what. But lately Billy had been taking Goodnight as much as possible, losing himself inside of Goodnight’s warm body almost like he was trying to crawl out of his own failing one.

 

That suited Goodnight just fine. He would arch up into the force of Billy’s thrusts, wanting Billy to take him hard, to pound into him, Goodnight taking each brutal thrust as deeply as he could, wanting to feel the rawness of it for days.

 

Goodnight never knew when their last time was going to be. But he wanted to feel it afterwards for as long as he could.

 

“God _yes_ Billy, please, come on, Billy, give it to me –“

 

Goodnight was babbling as Billy fucked into him brutally, braced above him shakily but intently, snapping his hips, driving into Goodnight like he was trying to lose himself in him entirely.

 

Goodnight arched up off the bed.

 

“Oh god, oh Billy, please, yes Billy _please_ –“

Goodnight didn’t even know what he was begging for, he just wanted Billy so much, all the time, he never stopped wanting him even for an instant, he would never _stop_ wanting him, except soon he wouldn’t have him. Goodnight could beg for him as much as he wanted, but it wouldn’t make a difference. Goodnight wouldn’t have him at all.

 

Goodnight looked up at Billy’s thrusting form and he felt overwhelmed, the intimacy and emotions of what they were doing suddenly mingling hot with grief that shot through him.

 

“Please don’t go,” Goodnight whispered, a plea he’d forced himself to never say out loud before because it was so unfair. But with Billy so present around him, _inside_ of him, the blunt truth of it hit Goodnight as powerfully as one of Billy’s thrusts.

 

Billy was going to be dead.

 

Goodnight had been so focused on the fact that Billy was _dying_ it was like he had forgotten that Billy was going to actually be _dead_. And once Billy was dead there’d be no coming back.

 

“Please, Billy,” Goodnight said voice breaking and Billy looked down at him, eyes aching as Goodnight felt a trickle of tears spill out of his own. He didn’t even know they’d been building but now tears were filling his eyes and running thick and fast down his cheeks.

 

“Goody,” Billy said in a wrecked voice, hand coming up to wipe some of the moisture from Goodnight’s face.

 

“Please don’t go, Billy, _please_ don’t go,” Goodnight suddenly sobbed out. “Please don’t go, I don’t want you to go, _please_ stay.”

 

Billy hooked his arms underneath Goodnight’s shoulders and was pulling him up, having found the strength somewhere inside of him to sit back on his knees on the bed, holding Goodnight to him, no longer thrusting but still buried inside of him.

 

“Please, Billy,” Goodnight begged, burying his face into Billy’s neck, holding him tightly like Billy would float through his fingers if he didn’t. “Please don’t go, please don’t go –“

 

One of Billy’s hands was digging into Goodnight’s back hard enough to bruise, the other was stroking Goodnight’s hair, Billy still inside of Goodnight as he held onto him and rubbed his back.

 

Goodnight continued to sob.

 

“Please don’t go, Billy. Oh god _please_ don’t go, please don’t go, please don’t go –“

 

Billy wrapped himself harder around him, holding Goodnight to him, and Goodnight felt Billy’s tears spill silently over his shoulders.

 

“Please don’t go, please don’t go –“

 

Billy held Goodnight to him as hard as possible, letting him cry, trying to give him as much comfort as he could while Goodnight sobbed and begged and pleaded for him not to go. But what Goodnight was begging for was something that nobody, not even Billy could give.

 

Afterwards, once Goodnight’s sobs had subsided, once Billy had pulled back out of him with regret in every movement, they sat clinging together, leaned up against the pillows, still holding each other tight.

 

Finally Goodnight managed to speak.

 

“I’m sorry,” he said in a miserable voice.

 

“Don’t be,” Billy said, turning to him and rubbing his forehead against Goodnight’s.

 

“That wasn’t fair,” Goodnight said, biting his lip which had started trembling. “You’ve got enough going on, I shouldn’t have put that on you.”

 

“I want every part of you,” Billy said to him seriously. And Goodnight suddenly flashed back to their first night together fifteen years ago. He’d had no idea he’d been Billy’s first, Billy’s only, so resolute, determined and _sure_ Billy had been in pulling Goodnight towards him, sliding his arms around him, youth and certainty snapping in his eyes as he’d whispered:

 

_“I want every part of you.”_

Goodnight leaned further into Billy who ran a hand over his cheek, holding Goodnight to him.

 

“I meant what I said then, and I mean it now,” Billy said, and Goodnight knew he was remembering too. He looked up at him to see Billy’s eyes still a little damp, but shining softly at him, full of more love than Goodnight had ever seen in them before, and he let it fill him. He didn’t deserve Billy, never had, but Goodnight had been _so_ empty when they’d met, and Billy had had so much love and tenderness locked away in him that he’d never been allowed to show, never been allowed to give to anyone because of who he was, where he was. And when the walls between them had broken down it was like all the love in Billy had poured out in a flood, filling Goodnight until he was overflowing with it.

 

“For better or for worse, Goody,” Billy murmured. “I want everything you have.”

 

Goodnight sighed and tilted his face up to Billy who kissed him gently.

 

The broke off and sat in silence for a while.

 

“Don’t worry about me,” Billy said finally, giving Goodnight’s shoulder a squeeze. “I’m not worried about what’ll happen to me.”

 

“Just me?” Goodnight asked quietly. He’d wanted Billy’s final months to be in peace and he hated that he had to be the cause for any of Billy’s worry.

 

“Yes and no,” Billy said slowly, rubbing his face against Goodnight’s. It was still damp. “I know you’ll be okay. But I’m worried that _you_ don’t know that.”

 

Well that was an awful lot of faith placed in Goodnight. But Billy had always had too much faith where Goodnight was concerned.

 

“Vasquez seems to think I’m going to blow my brains out,” Goodnight said, his lip twitching wryly.

 

“Do you think you’re going to?” Billy asked quietly.

 

Goodnight pulled back to look into Billy’s gentle, searching eyes.

 

“I don’t think I have the guts,” he admitted.

 

Billy’s hand stroked his face.

 

“If there’s one thing you’ve got, Goodnight Robicheaux, it’s guts.”

 

Billy paused.

 

“But I hope not for that,” he said.

 

Goodnight’s throat tightened.

 

“But I don’t, I don’t –“

 

He felt a fresh wave of grief build up as he said in a rush:

 

“I just don’t see how I _can_ live without you, Billy,” he said, the words almost choked out.

 

“You’ve lived before me,” Billy murmured.

 

“Yeah barely,” Goodnight snorted. “Was walking around like a corpse until I found Sam. Was able to keep going thanks to him, but probably wouldn’t have made it very far if I hadn’t met you.”

 

Billy was staring at him thoughtfully.

 

“Well…if you’re really worried about it…go find Sam first. Goody? Go find Sam. After all of this. If you’re scared of who you’re going to become or of – of what you might do, just promise me you’ll go find Sam before doing anything final.”

 

Billy’s eyes softened.

 

“But I’m not worried about you. I haven’t been for a while now.”

 

Goodnight brushed a thumb over Billy’s arm.

 

“Okay I promise,” he said lowly. “Never been able to get through a single goddamn thing by myself anyways.”

 

Billy shifted to look at him better.

 

“That is _not_ true,” he said quietly. “You went back to Rose Creek by yourself. That one was all you.”

 

Goodnight bit his lip, thinking about the time he’d wheeled his horse around listening only to the voice inside of him, the one that had been buried for so long. He hadn’t felt like he was riding towards any kind of karmic redemption in the eyes of God.

 

Because Goodnight hadn’t ridden back for a God who was probably through with him by now anyways. He hadn’t ridden back for himself. He hadn’t even ridden back for _Billy_. The man had even asked as much while they were lying in their beds recuperating.

 

“I came back for them,” Goodnight had croaked out, there on the flimsy mattress, looking across at Billy who was equally banged up. His voice was weak but it was sure, helped along by the strength of his real voice, the one inside of him. “I wanted to die with you because I love you. But this is what I wanted to die _for_.”

 

And the hell of the thing was, Billy had just smiled at him like he was hoping Goodnight would say that.

 

He smiled again now, in their bed in this mountain cabin, trailing a finger down Goodnight’s jaw.

 

“Billy, you know as well as I do I would still be living a half-life if I hadn’t met you or Sam,” Goodnight said tiredly, but leaning into Billy’s touch. “Wouldn’t be anywhere if either of you idiots hadn’t got it into your heads that I was somehow worth your time.”

 

Billy continued to lightly caress his face.

 

“You ever consider that maybe people spend time on you because of who _you_ are, not because of who they are?” Billy asked. “People like you because of who you are as a person. Not half of one.”

 

Billy leaned in to kiss Goodnight lightly, like he couldn’t help himself, before continuing.

 

“Some people are meant to be with other people. You’re one of them. But it doesn’t mean you’re not a whole person by yourself.”

 

Goodnight smiled a little, a watery thing, but still there.

 

“You’ve always been too good to me,” he said in a soft, scolding tone.

 

“No more than you deserve,” Billy said in a teasing tone, eyes dancing a little. But then he sobered up a little and leaned in closer to Goodnight.

 

“I never expected to live this long,” Billy said quietly. “And I _really_ never expected to do it with – with someone I love as much as you. You’ve always had other good things. But I’ve only ever had you. And I can’t _believe_ how lucky I am for that.”

 

Goodnight swallowed and Billy reached out to stroke his lips.

 

“I don’t have a single regret with you,” Billy said softly. “Not one.”

 

Goodnight realized that Billy’s eyes were wet. But they continued to gaze at Goodnight, gentle and resolute.

 

“I mean it, Goody,” Billy said. “You might not know you’ll be okay. But if you can’t believe yourself? Believe me.”

 

 

*

 

“Yes Goody…”

 

Goodnight felt Billy’s fingers tighten in his hair where he was bobbing between Billy’s legs, sucking him off long and slow, Billy steadily coming apart.

 

“Right there, Goody, right there, oh god, yes _,_  Goody _yes_ –“

 

His hips bucked up and he was climaxing hot into Goodnight’s mouth, Goodnight swallowing and savoring every last pulse.

 

He finally pulled himself off Billy’s length, rubbing Billy’s hip.

 

“Well that was fun,” he said breathing hard.

 

“I can’t feel my legs.”

 

“No need to thank me,” Goodnight said, wiping a drop off his slick flushed lips.

 

“ _Goody_.”

 

Goodnight looked up in alarm at Billy’s voice. Billy was lying there on the bed, looking up at him in panic.

 

“I can’t feel my legs.”

 

 

*

 

 

Doctor Black dragged a hard wooden rod along the sole of Billy’s foot.

 

“No,” Billy mumbled.

 

She nodded and packed the wooden instrument away.

 

“So how long?” Goodnight asked her, placing a hand on Billy’s shoulder where he knew Billy would feel it.

 

She looked between them both.

 

“At this point…a few weeks. The loss of feeling will move upwards and when it hits his stomach it will be quick.”

 

“I’m sorry,” she said to Billy. It was the softest Goodnight thought he’d ever seen the severe old woman look.

 

“Don’t be,” he said to her, looking tired but managing to look up at her sincerely. “Thank you again for everything you’ve done. For me…this house…beating Goody at poker. I love when that happens.”

 

Goodnight was reeling too much to smile. After everything they’d been through…it came down to just a few more weeks.

 

But in a way it helped knowing.

 

After she left on that late February morning, Billy curled up exhausted and went to sleep. Goodnight watched him sleep for a while. Billy didn’t look peaceful when he slept anymore, like the pain was reaching him even there. He’d been taking pills of Doctor Black’s ever since she’d first diagnosed him, and they had helped with his pain and energy significantly. But now there wasn’t a thing anyone could do anymore.

 

Except to make him as comfortable as possible, Goodnight thought, sliding into bed beside Billy, curling around him and falling asleep too, holding Billy the entire while.

 

Billy woke him hours later.

 

“Goody…”

 

“Mmm?”

 

Goodnight blinked himself awake to see Billy biting his lip as he looked at him, hand on Goodnight’s shoulder where he’d been jostling him.

 

“I have to…” he said, looking a little awkward about it but raising an eyebrow meaningfully at Goodnight. Goodnight caught on immediately.

 

“Come on,” he said, getting out of bed and helping Billy to his feet, one of Billy’s arms around his shoulders, Goodnight’s arm around his waist.

 

“Want me to carry you, or can you move ‘em?” he murmured.

 

Billy swung a leg experimentally. “Yeah. Weird not feeling them though.”

 

He managed to take hobbling steps as they shuffled their way through the cabin to the bathroom, which was an extra room attached to the side of the log house, connected by a door. It was freezing when Goodnight swung the door open, helping Billy inside of the outhouse that wasn’t really an outhouse.

 

“Hold on, put your hand there –“

 

“If you grab my shoulder –“

 

“You have to –“

 

“Here, put your other hand on the wall –“

 

They managed to find a way that they could both fit with Billy half-standing, half-leaning into Goodnight, and Goodnight managed to loop a hand around Billy’s waist, fumble at the drawstring of his pajama bottoms and let them slide down enough for Billy to be exposed.

 

“You good?”

 

He couldn’t see Billy’s face properly but he could _feel_ the lift of Billy’s eyebrow.

 

“One of my hands is on the wall and the other is on you.”

 

Goodnight paused. “Ah.”

 

And he managed to reach down between Billy’s legs and take hold of him, and aim him towards the hole of the latrine.

 

“Okay go.”

 

They stood there propped up in the outhouse, Goodnight holding onto Billy, the two of them waiting in silence.

 

“Billy?”

 

“Just give me a minute.”

 

“For what?”

 

“To go.”

 

“I thought you had to pee!”

 

“I _do!_ I’m just…working up to it.”

 

“What is there to work up _to?_ ”

 

“Shut up, I’m concentrating.”

 

“On _what_? You’re not doing anything!”

 

“Some of us take longer.”

 

“Well can you take longer faster, it’s freezing in here.”

 

“You’re cold? I’m the one with my dick out.”

 

“And for what I’m sure I have no idea yet.”

 

“Wait it’s coming I – okay.”

 

Billy began to relieve himself, Goodnight holding onto him, and they stood there as a trickling sound filled the small room. They stood silently as the stream continued.

 

Goodnight felt Billy turn his head to glance at him. Goodnight turned his head to glance at Billy.

 

And then they both exploded in laughter.

 

“Oh my god,“ Goodnight gasped.

 

“Goody, focus!”

 

“I can’t –“

 

“Goodnight Robicheaux, if you let go I will throw you in there,” Billy said, the words almost lost in how hard he was laughing, braced between Goodnight and the wall.

 

“You _know_ I lose my grip when I laugh!” Goodnight said, hand starting to shake in mirth where it was gripping Billy.

 

_“Goody!”_

 

“Okay okay –“

 

They clammed up immediately, jaws clenching but trembling in withheld laughter as Billy continued to relieve himself in a steady stream, Goodnight doing his best to keep his hand steady.

 

Goodnight could feel Billy’s shoulders start to shake again in silent laughter. And when he did the sound of his stream was punctuated by short bursts.

 

The sound effect just set them both off again until they were practically bent double laughing in the cramped room.

 

They were both miraculously dry once Billy finished, Goodnight tucking him back in, both of them still holding onto each other as they collapsed against the wall, laughing themselves hoarse.

 

It was a good thing their relationship had never had much room for pride. They’d both seen each other through so much that there wasn’t much use for any ego. Billy had seen Goodnight through fits of delusions, babbling incoherently, sobbing nonsense into Billy’s shoulders as he hallucinated his way through waking nightmares like a scared child. Goodnight had seen Billy stiffen when discrimination was hurled at him, seen Billy hang his head in shame when occasionally there was a situation where it would have been just too dangerous to fight back, and the only option was to let his personhood and dignity go.

 

Neither really _liked_ having the other see them in those moments of vulnerability at first. But after enough time it had almost become a refuge for them. They could hide from other people as much as they had to, but they could never hide with each other. The world was ugly and dangerous. But although they had touched that ugliness separately, it could never touch them.

 

They made it back to the bedroom, getting back onto the bed. When they lay back down and got comfortable they both looked at each other, lips twitching.

 

And then they just lost it again.

 

 

*

 

Not all their conversations were so lighthearted.

 

Billy had spent a full day rubbing his thighs. He was numb from the knees down but his thighs were beginning to ache with pain as whatever was happening with his blood worked its way upwards.

 

After that day Billy looked up at Goodnight his eyes as serious as Goodnight had ever seen him.

 

“It’s only going to get worse,” he said, his jaw set resolutely. “It’s going to hurt and I’m going to beg you to make it stop. I’m going to beg you to kill me. I will want you to kill me.”

 

Goodnight stared at him, his mouth opening and closing uselessly.

 

Finally he said: “Billy…I’ll…if you wanted me to…”

 

He looked at him quietly.

 

“I would.”

 

And he would. It would destroy any last piece of sanity he had left. It would damn him to hell. He would go insane, it would tear him in two, he would put the gun to his own head immediately afterwards but not before his soul was wrenched from him. He would lose his soul and it would become ripped to pieces and he would _deserve it_.

 

But if Billy wanted him to, he would do it.

 

But Billy just leaned forward and took Goodnight’s face violently, his fingers digging into the sides of Goodnight’s face hard enough to hurt as he made Goodnight look at him.

 

“Do _not_ do it, Goody,” he said fiercely. “No matter what I say. I don’t care if I’m screaming in pain, begging you to end it, begging you to kill me. Because it will be the pain talking. It will _not_ be me asking you.”

 

Goodnight nodded, tears pricking his eyes.

 

“Do not listen to me then, you listen to me _now,_ ” Billy almost growled. “Understand me? No matter what I tell you, _don’t_ do it. I will _not_ let you do that to yourself. When I said I had no regrets with you? Asking you to do that would be my _biggest_ regret.”

 

Billy dug his fingers harder into Goodnight’s face and the tears spilled out of Goodnight’s eyes.

 

“You hear me, Goodnight?”

 

Billy looked at Goodnight with an intensity that cut straight to his core.

 

“I forbid you.”

 

Goodnight just nodded dumbly and Billy narrowed his eyes at him until he was satisfied Goodnight had heard and understood him.

 

Goodnight had heard him. And although he would have done anything Billy asked of him….secretly? He was relieved.

 

He had been the Angel of Death for so many.

 

He didn’t want to be it for Billy Rocks too.

 

 

*

 

 

 

“Oh God, Goody, it hurts –“

 

“Shhh, I know, I know sweetheart, I know.”

 

“Goody I can’t –“

 

“Yes you can, shh, one more, you’ll feel better, come on, darling, one more.”

 

“Goody it _burns_.”

 

“I know, sweetheart, I know it does.”

 

“I –“

 

The rest of Billy’s words were lost as he heaved the rest of the contents of his stomach into the wooden basin on the floor, Goodnight curled behind him to keep him steady, wiping the damp hair away from his brow.

 

Goodnight glanced into the basin, looking with dread at the blood in its contents. He just stroked Billy’s forehead again as Billy shook and sweated his way through the bout of nausea. Not the first one Goodnight had seen but the most prolonged. Billy wasn’t eating much anymore and most things he put in his stomach came back up.

 

“Oh god I feel sick.”

 

“I know.” Goodnight adjusted him in his arms while Billy clutched weakly at the edge of the basin, opening his eyes to look in. It looked like he was going to say something but then just dropped his head, retching loudly into the bucket.

 

He dry heaved a few more times, took in a large breath, lifted his head and exhaustedly said: “That’s disgusting.”

 

“No it’s not,” Goodnight said quietly, wiping Billy’s mouth.

 

Billy was shaking and shuddering and sweating up a storm but he managed to turn his head back to look at Goodnight.

 

“Yes it is. I pissed the fucking _bed_ this morning, Goody,” he said weakly. He still sounded ashamed.

 

“And I _loved_ you this morning,” Goodnight said fiercely, tightening his arms around Billy.

 

“Goody…” he whimpered, as Goodnight wrapped his arms around him more, pulling Billy back to his chest, who curled into it shivering.

 

“I’ll love you tomorrow,” he said more gently, rocking Billy a little, who trembled in his arms, nausea subsiding. Goodnight rested his head against Billy’s.

 

“And I love you right now,” Goodnight said, cheek pressed against Billy’s hair. He rubbed his face once against him.

 

“It would take a lot more than death to stop me from loving you,” he murmured into Billy’s ear.

 

Billy let out a shuddering breath, and Goodnight sat there rocking him until the shaking stopped.

 

Eventually Billy’s breathing started to even out. He clutched weakly at the fabric of Goodnight’s shirt.

 

“I love you, Goody,” he said through his ravaged and burning throat. He lifted his hand weakly to place his hand over Goodnight’s aching heart, splaying his fingers as though to hold it, like he was worried Goodnight hadn’t heard him and he wanted to make sure Goodnight knew.

 

“I know, sweetheart.” Goodnight pressed a gentle kiss to Billy’s damp forehead. “I know.”

 

 

*

 

 

 

“Do you believe in heaven?” Billy asked quietly one night.

 

They were curled up in front of the fireplace, leaning back against the sofa. A blanket was wrapped tightly around them both, and their heads were leaning together, warm everywhere they touched.

 

Goodnight turned his head to look at Billy. The firelight was casting him in its glow, accentuating Billy’s sunken cheeks and his tired eyes. But he looked peaceful in this respite from the pain that had been coursing through him more lately.

 

“Yeah,” Goodnight said honestly.

 

Billy nodded eyes on the fire. “Why?”

 

Theological questions were very unlike Billy. Billy was so grounded in reality he didn’t tend to focus on anything he couldn’t see for himself. But he sounded like he genuinely wanted to know what Goodnight thought.

 

“Well,” Goodnight said, fingers trailing down Billy’s arms. “Go to church enough times when you’re younger, I suppose you can’t help but hold onto some parts of it.”

 

“But I think…” Goodnight stared into the fire. “I think I believe in heaven because I’ve seen hell.”

 

Billy turned his head more towards Goodnight to listen better. Goodnight continued to run his hand down Billy’s arm, holding him close against him.

 

“I think everything in the universe has its counterpoint,” Goodnight said quietly. “Heaven, hell…fire, water…”

 

“Me, you,” Billy finished, tilting his head to look at Goodnight.

 

Goodnight looked back at him, the warmth of Billy pouring through him, shining out of Billy’s eyes.

 

“Yeah,” Goodnight said hoarsely. He leaned his chin forward just a fraction, and Billy met his lips in a slow, chaste kiss.

 

They pulled back, lips slick and warm. Billy sighed, keeping his face close to Goodnight’s.

 

“Why are you asking?” Goodnight said gently.

 

Billy shrugged, his thin shoulders rubbing against Goodnight’s with the motion. “Just been thinking about it more lately.”

 

“God?” Goodnight asked. He was a little surprised. He knew Billy didn’t believe in any such thing, although he had never questioned or judged Goodnight’s own beliefs.

 

Billy shook his head where it was leaned against Goodnight’s. “No. I still think everything that happens to men is caused by other men, and other men alone.”

 

“Except this,” he said after a pause, meaning what was happening to him that had led him to be here on the floor with Goodnight, his legs numb and unfeeling and tucked under him, but every other part of him tucked into Goodnight’s warmth.

 

“But I was just thinking about it,” Billy said quietly. “Heaven and hell. I don’t think I believe in it…but I do value your opinion you know. Believe it or not,” he added with an ironic smile.

 

He fell silent long enough for Goodnight to see where his concern lay.

 

“I think you don’t have a thing to worry about,” Goodnight said with conviction he felt in the deepest part of him. He was as sure about this as he was about anything. “If anyone’s going to heaven it’s you. Not hell. I can’t speak for myself, but you’re not going there.”

 

Billy looked up at him, face soft.

 

“You’re not going there either,” he said.

 

“Thought you didn’t believe in it,” Goodnight murmured, leaning forward to brush his lips against the corner of Billy’s eyes.

 

Billy’s eyes fell closed at the gentle touch, but he opened them again looking thoughtful.

 

“I can believe in it well enough when I see you waking up from it,” he said quietly.

 

Goodnight swallowed, shifting closer to Billy, the softness of him surrounding him.

 

They stayed tucked together in front of the fire, looking into its depths. Finally Billy leaned his head back to towards Goodnight’s.

 

“Anyway,” he said. “Even if you did go to hell, I’d just come and get you.”

 

“Oh you would, would you?” Goodnight asked, holding Billy closer to him.

 

“I’ve eaten your cooking, you think the devil can scare me?” Billy mumbled, his lips twitching.

 

Goodnight huffed out a laugh, partly at Billy’s comment, but partly in just plain amazement at _Billy_. Billy who was sitting there dying, no feeling in his legs, weakened beyond return but still utterly determined and fierce in his convictions that he could fight off all of Goody’s demons for him, including the very devil himself.

 

And Goodnight believed he would. Between Billy and the devil, Goodnight would bet on Billy every time.

 

Goodnight had never bet against Billy in any ring before. He wasn’t going to start now.

 

Goodnight’s laughter faded out and he turned his face towards Billy to look at him. Billy looked back up at Goodnight and they looked at each other soul to soul.

 

“I’m going to miss you,” Goodnight said quietly, the simplest truth of it all.

 

Billy’s face took on a small smile. Small, but still as strong and steadfast as the rest of him.

 

“I’ll see you again,” he said softly. “Somehow. I don’t know what I believe. But I believe that.”

 

Goodnight’s lips parted. He leaned in and so did Billy to meet him halfway in a slow, deep kiss.

 

They kissed searchingly, deliberately, like they were trying to taste the deepest essence of each other in case there was anything left in each other they had yet to find.

 

Billy’s hands slid up Goodnight’s chest to his shoulders, where he pushed down, lifting up enough off of Goodnight to straddle him, his numb legs kneeling on the carpet.

 

“Billy,” Goodnight breathed out, head spinning from that kiss. “You sure you should be –“

 

“Just because I can’t feel them doesn’t mean I can’t use them,” Billy said huskily, his hands slowly going to Goodnight’s sleep pants, looking down at Goodnight with want as he drew him out.

 

Goodnight looked up at him and didn’t do Billy the disservice of asking if he was sure again. Certainty was breathing out of Billy’s every pore. It blanketed Goodnight, surrounding him, permeating his senses until all he could do was nod and slide down the soft flannel pants that Billy wore to sleep. Apart from those he wasn’t wearing anything else.

 

Goodnight leaned back further against the sofa, holding Billy up until Billy was braced over him, supporting himself on the solid presence of Goodnight beneath him, and his own unfeeling legs. He stroked Goodnight with a sure hand, slowly and methodically until Goodnight was quivering silently beneath him, arms braced beneath his thighs, holding Billy up, gazing up at Billy in awe.

 

Billy half-smiled, hair slipping past his dark eyes which took in every part of Goodnight, roaming over him like they were cataloguing every part of him, wanting to take as much as he could of Goodnight with him before he left. Goodnight was leaking already and Billy worked Goodnight’s essence over the length of him until Goodnight was slick and shining and flushed. And then in an unsteady motion Billy was leaning up over Goodnight. Goodnight’s hands tightened where they were helping to prop him up, and Billy lined Goodnight up to him.

 

And then Billy was shakily lowering himself down onto Goodnight, letting out a breath as he slid down over Goodnight entirely, enveloping him with warmth.

 

“I can feel you,” Billy whispered, leaning his head back, letting his eyes fall closed almost reverently. “I can feel you, Goodnight.”

 

Goodnight let out a shuddering breath and slid his hands up Billy’s skin in benediction, his skin warm from the fire behind him, and Goodnight just looked at him. Looked at Billy in all of his resolute glory, burning brighter than any flame.

 

Billy brought his head back down, opened his eyes, pinning Goodnight there with the pervading force of them. He ran a hand through Goodnight’s hair, down his face, across his lips, trailing down his throat, and Goodnight could only look at him. He couldn’t have torn his eyes away from the burning brilliance of him if he tried, and he didn’t want to.

 

And so he watched Billy start to move above him, backlit by the fire behind him, a glow coming off of him, shining brightly, infinitely. He was bliss and he was letting Goodnight in, Goodnight was inside of him in every way, and all Goodnight could do was lose himself to the reverence of it.

 

The main reason Goodnight believed in heaven?

 

He’d been living with him for over fifteen years.

 

 

*

 

 

The doctor had said the shift would happen fast when it did, and almost overnight Billy had moved from pain and numbness and low discomfort to a burning agony that came in waves.

 

He’d stopped eating, his stomach shutting down as the numbness worked its way upwards. Anytime he tried to get any food through him he would contort in pain, Goodnight holding onto him and a wooden basin while Billy retched violently until all he was getting up was stomach acid that burned and burned through him. He drank the water Goodnight would hold up to him and only let him have in sips at a time, because in his thirst Billy would desperately chug any water put before him, dehydrated and delirious, and then vomit it all back up and cry fitfully at the loss of water as it hit the bottom of the basin again.

 

They spent the day with Billy curled over the washbasin, alternating between retching and crying, both at the same time more often than not, while Goodnight soothed him, wiped the sweat from his damp, burning forehead, gave him tiny sips of water, held him, pulled his hair back, held wet cloths to his fiery skin. Even clothing was too aggravating for him to wear.

 

And at night Billy would sleep restlessly, sleep no longer a blank refuge from the pain he felt during the day. He would toss and turn, whimpering, flushed and feverish, getting more and more delirious and crying out, garbled words, most of them Korean. Goodnight couldn’t catch them all, but he could recognize ‘help me’, and he could sure as hell recognize his own name when he heard it being moaned from Billy’s ravaged throat.

 

So Goodnight tried to help which included just holding Billy to him when he was shivering from cold, letting him go and wiping a cloth over him when he was hot and aggravated and couldn’t bear any other touch than water trickling over his gaunt form. He tried to help by murmuring to him, singing to him, telling stories to him, anything that would distract Billy enough to make him go quiet with his lips trembling, trying to take steady breaths as he listened to Goodnight with wide eyes and a hand clenched tight around Goodnight’s own. Goodnight didn’t think Billy even understood most of the words, but he seemed to be latching onto Goodnight’s voice, and would weakly dig his hand into Goodnight’s whenever he stopped talking.

 

Mostly Billy just sobbed in pain, unable to sleep, Goodnight holding him to him and rocking him, trying to ease the pain in any way he could. It was getting to a point where Goodnight was honestly hoping death would just come already.

 

One night was so bad that Goodnight thought Billy was going to die right there while screaming in his arms.

 

“ _Goody_ ,” Billy moaned, thrashing in Goodnight’s arms, weeping uncontrollably. “Oh god I can’t, I _can’t_ , make it stop, make it stop, _GOODY.”_

“I’m right here sweetheart,” Goodnight gasped out through his tears, holding Billy to him, shaking while Billy lashed out in his pain. “It’ll stop soon, I promise, it’ll stop soon.”

 

“Goody,” Billy sobbed out, Goodnight’s name drawn out with each hoarse cry of Billy’s as the man clutched his stomach. “Goody it hurts, it hurts so _much_ –“

 

“I know, I know, it’ll stop, it’ll stop,” Goodnight said and prayed it would, trying to blink tears out of his eyes as he wiped Billy’s hair out of his forehead, holding him close, trying to rub the pain out of Billy’s limbs.

 

Billy yelled out something Korean, and then was pressing himself hard to Goodnight with a spasm, clawing desperately at his chest, ripping at his shirt.

 

“Make it _stop,”_ he moaned out. “Oh Jesus, Goody please, _please_ make it stop –“

 

He broke off into an almost inhuman howl of pain, curling in on himself. But he was reaching back for Goodnight again, clutching him hard as he sobbed.

 

“Goody make it stop, make it stop, kill me please, _please_ Goody, Goody kill me, _KILL ME_.”

 

“You told me not to, Billy!” Goodnight sobbed out desperately, gasping for breath as he stroked Billy’s hair in agony. “You told me not to! I’m so sorry, I’m _so_ sorry.”

 

“ _Please_ kill me,” Billy begged him, weeping against his chest. But suddenly he took in a shuddering breath and was looking up at Goodnight, his eyes wild but lucid.

 

“No,” he gasped out, suddenly seeming to realize where he was, his face still contorted in agony but his breath coming more controlled. “No no no no _don’t,_ Goody, don’t. Forbid – I – _don’t_. Can’t let you, won’t let you, I can’t let you, can’t let you -”

 

He continued to babble to himself, a half-delirious mantra that seemed to calm him down as his breath slowed out, his limbs lost some of their rigid tension, and he went limp in Goodnight’s arms, eyes falling shut, the wave of pain finally passing over and leaving him in a wash as he went completely still.

 

“Billy?” Goodnight whimpered, heart stopping. He curled over Billy again, staring down into Billy’s slack face.

 

Then he heard it.

 

“Water,” Billy croaked out.

 

He was breathing. He was alive.

 

Goodnight practically slumped in relief, even though he’d just been praying moments ago for death to take Billy, a death that wasn’t Goodnight.

 

Billy’s worst demon would have been asking Goodnight to kill him. And Billy might not be able to fight off death itself. But he had still fought off the devil just like he’d said he would. Even at death’s door Billy Rocks was always and forever the strongest person Goodnight knew.

 

Goodnight held a glass of water to Billy’s parched lips. Billy took tiny sips. They stayed down. He finished the glass. It stayed down too.

 

Billy curled into Goodnight when he finished drinking, eyes closed. He was breathing shallowly but steadily, face smoothed out, no longer cut through with lines of pain.

 

He looked like he was almost falling asleep. But before he did, Goodnight heard him say two more words, weak but sincere:

 

“Thank you.”

 

*

 

Billy made it through the night. Goodnight had stayed awake the whole time watching Billy, holding Billy, trying to take in every last detail of what Billy felt like alive, because Goodnight knew it would happen soon.

 

At dawn Billy’s eyes cracked open again. He stared across the mattress at Goodnight, taking shallow breaths as they just took in each other’s faces. Billy reached out to trace Goodnight’s lips, weak but controlled. And Goodnight felt for a moment that it was almost a kindness that the illness hadn’t reached Billy’s hands.

 

“Goodnight?” he asked. His voice was weak but peaceful, and clear as a bell. One without gunshots pinging off of it.

 

“Yeah,” Goodnight breathed.

 

“Take me outside?” Billy asked, and just like that Goodnight knew.

 

He nodded, pulled some warm clothes on over Billy and made sure he was wrapped comfortably in blankets before lifting him up and carrying him out to the back porch, Billy’s arms around his neck. He weighed almost nothing.

 

He sat down on the porch swing, the one Vasquez had built, still holding Billy in his arms. He arranged the blankets over him. And then he wrapped his arms back around him and pulled Billy to him, holding him against his chest. Billy sighed contentedly.

 

They sat there quietly, swing rocking, the sun creeping up over the mountains and beginning to dapple the lake in gold. The snow was so much thinner now. Goodnight could make out some dark tufts of grass where the snow had melted down closer to the lake, and out on the lake he could see the ice was thinner, cracked through in some places entirely, water rushing over the ice to meet the sun.

 

“Goody,” Billy said faintly.

 

“Yeah?” Goodnight asked, a tear slipping out the corner of his eye, but he managed to keep his voice steady.

 

“We had a good life,” Billy said quietly but decisively. He lifted his head off Goodnight’s shoulder, and it looked like it took him every effort to do it, but his eyes when they met Goodnight’s were gentle.

 

Goodnight knew he was crying, could feel the tears flowing down his face, but he managed to reach out to cup Billy’s face tenderly.

 

“There’s so much I want to say to you,” he whispered in a cracked voice.

 

Billy smiled at him, a soft, adoring thing.

 

“Tell me a story, Goody,” he said softly. “I love your stories.”

 

Goodnight bit his lip to stop it from trembling. He looked out at the lake, blinking fast. He saw a chunk of ice break off far away, bob in the water, and start to float away.

 

Goodnight swallowed, sniffed loudly, and angled his head back towards Billy.

 

“I ever tell you the one about the Wandering Bayou?” he asked.

 

Billy smiled and he shook his head, closing his eyes as he let his head go back to rest on Goodnight’s shoulder, his hair brushing Goodnight’s lips.

 

“I didn’t? Well then let’s see,” Goodnight said hoarsely before clearing his throat. “Nobody knew where it came from, and nobody knew where it was going. So we just called it the Wandering Bayou. It would float from river to river, a huge, tangled mass of trees and creepers and flowers, leaving a trail of algae out behind it, a bright green tail that would sway in the water from side to side like the tail of a gator.”

 

Billy hummed and Goodnight pressed his lips to the top of Billy’s head, swallowing down tears before continuing.

 

“Some say that it was actually an alligator that moved that bayou,” he said, trying to put a bit of magic into his wobbling voice. “That one day an alligator swallowed a whole bunch of cypress seeds. And then trees started to grow out of it, shooting up through its skin until that alligator had a whole forest growing out of its back. It would swim between the rivers and carry that forest with it wherever it went.”

 

Goodnight looked out at the lake again. The sun was casting it in pinks and golds that shimmered their way across the sparkling ice, warming it through.

 

“Now _some_ say that,” Goodnight said, dropping his voice meaningfully. “But I happen to think that bayou just felt trapped. That it was actually looking for the ocean.”

 

Goodnight’s throat grew tight and he felt Billy’s head nuzzle his shoulder. Goodnight wrapped his arms around him tighter, tears starting to flow thick again. His chin was trembling and his voice cracked. But he swallowed down a sob.

 

“Yeah that bayou just felt stuck,” he said, voice quavering. “I think it was heading down the rivers, just searching for the first taste of saltwater. Bayous can get awfully murky, you know.”

 

Billy was breathing shallowly and Goodnight gave his shoulder a rub, blinked away tears and rested his chin on top of Billy’s head.

 

“This bayou just wanted the waves to come rushing in to clear away the algae, wash through all that brackish water until finally that bayou was free enough to float out into the sparkling gulf, nothing ahead but open sea.”

 

Billy was whispering something and Goodnight tilted his head to hear better, eyes swimming with tears.

 

“Did it…did it find it?” Billy mumbled, lips barely moving, eyes closed.

 

“I know it did, Billy Rocks,” Goodnight said, his voice almost breaking, arms tightening around Billy. “I know it for sure.”

 

He swallowed and held Billy closer to him, rubbing Billy’s back, kissing his hair, his arms held tight around him and his throat and chest on fire from the sobs he was holding back. The sobs of grief he was holding back until he was sure.

 

Finally a light mountain breeze whisked over them, making Goodnight blink. He managed to pull back enough to look at Billy’s face. It was peaceful, the sunlight brushing it with gold.

 

“Billy?” Goodnight asked, his voice wobbling.

 

Billy didn’t answer.

 

He was still, so still. Even when he was holding himself still and poised, he had never been as still as this, motion and fluidity always ready to roll out of him like a wave.

 

But now he was just still.

 

“Billy…” Goodnight whispered, his lips trembling, a sob rising in his throat.

 

He had slipped away quietly while Goodnight was holding him, the last things around him the feel of Goodnight’s arms and the sounds of Goodnight’s voice. Goodnight’s voice that he’d managed to hold together just long enough to carry Billy over.

 

Only then did Goodnight let the sob rip through him.

 

“ _Billy.”_

 

He let his forehead fall to Billy’s, Billy’s head lolling a bit with the motion. Goodnight pressed kisses to Billy’s face, his peaceful face with every line of pain smoothed out and carried away, taking Billy with them.

 

“Billy, Billy…”

 

The sun kept rising in the sky and Goodnight kept holding Billy’s motionless form to him on the porch swing, curling around him, crying his name, and weeping his whole entire heart out.

 

 

*

 

He carried Billy down to the lake at midday, wrapped in a sheet, cradled in his arms. He didn’t weigh much. Goodnight walked through the trees, the water glimmering to his right, lapping out from beneath the sparkling sheet of ice by the shore, but he didn’t see any of it, walking in a daze through the pines.

 

Goodnight only looked up when he spied a cluster of white and he came upon the clump of birch trees, only realizing just now that it was the same place he’d cried properly for the first time after learning about Billy.

 

He went to the middle of the grove where beside one tree there was a clump of high earth, chunks of snow sticking to it. And beside that…

 

The grave Vasquez had dug for them. It was Billy’s grave, but in a way he’d dug it for Goodnight too. It would have filled in with snow at some point, the snow melting down until the earth in the grave was icy and crumbling, more gravel than soil. But the walls were straight, the corners clean, and it had clearly been dug with care.

 

He gently set Billy down on the ground beside the grave, unwrapping the sheet a little. He just stared into Billy’s face with its closed eyes, its restful expression. He might have been sleeping, except Billy’s recent sleeps had never let him look as peaceful as this.

 

Goodnight swallowed as he took Billy’s knife belt where it had been dangling on Goodnight’s arm. He slid it carefully around Billy’s waist, buckling it in the front, making sure it was secure. Goodnight had thought about keeping one of the winking blades but it didn’t seem right somehow. He didn’t think Billy would need them where he was going, but he didn’t like the thought of Billy without them.

 

He hung onto Billy’s hairpin though. He had to. It had stayed in Billy’s hair more often in the past few days to keep it out of his face while he vomited. But now Goodnight slid it out, carefully arranging Billy’s hair, tucking it behind his ears. And hands shaking he pulled out his flask which he tucked into Billy’s vest pocket, over his heart. And then he sat back, snow soaking into his knees, and he looked at Billy lying on the sheet.

 

He seemed so small in death. He never had been a big man, but his posture had always made him seem taller somehow. Billy had held himself as straight as one of his knives and sometimes Goodnight got the sense that he was looking up at Billy. And even though he was so lithe, something about the way he carried himself was so straightforward, energy expanding out of him until it filled the room. Dynamic even when he was leaning back in a chair, eyes calmly appraising his surroundings, sometimes with a glint of fight, sometimes a spark of amusement, and sometimes nothing but soft love in them as he slid his eyes up to meet Goodnight’s, smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

 

Now those eyes were closed forever. And swallowing back a sob, Goodnight leaned down to gently kiss each one.

 

With his forehead resting against Billy’s and only Goodnight’s breath between them, he stroked the side of Billy’s face and a tear slipped out of his eyes.

 

“Loving you was the best thing I ever did,” Goodnight whispered. And then he pressed his lips to Billy’s still ones, taking one last kiss.

 

He hooked his arms beneath Billy and gently lifted him, some part of him registering that it was the last time he’d ever hold him. And he managed to get Billy into the grave until he was lying on the icy layer of earth. He pulled the sheet a little more snugly around Billy. He just didn’t want him to be cold.

 

He stared at Billy’s face, tucking one dark strand of hair back behind his ear where it had slipped out over his closed eyes, letting his hand linger on Billy’s cheek. And then Goodnight gently pulled the sheet across Billy’s face.

 

He climbed out of the grave, getting dirt beneath his fingernails. He realized suddenly he’d have to go back to the cabin for a shovel but he didn’t want to leave Billy lying there in an open grave.

 

And then he noticed the shovel leaning against the birch tree that was at the head of Billy’s grave. Just waiting for him. Left there in the understanding that in Goodnight’s grief he wouldn’t have remembered to bring it down himself.

 

He took the handle which scraped against the bark of the tree, and he began to fill the grave with the cold soil, needing a few jabs at the mound of earth to loosen it up. He shut his ears at the first sounds of earth scattering down onto Billy. But then he remembered the sheet covering Billy and some of his tension eased. He had kept his promise. His hands were the last thing that had touched Billy.

 

He filled the rest of the grave.

 

Once it was full Goodnight didn’t know what to do. He thought of the brief, Catholic funeral services of his youth, but he didn’t remember the words well and Billy hadn’t been a religious man anyways.

 

So he lifted Billy’s hairpin and help it up against the birch tree that stood tall over Billy’s grave like a living headstone. And he scratched ‘Billy Rocks’ there into the white papery bark. The name Billy had chosen for himself, the name he’d walked through life with, his paths as free a choice as his own name. It was the only eulogy he needed.

 

Goodnight walked back to the cabin in a daze. He walked straight back into their bedroom and curled up on the bed, looking across at Billy’s side of the mattress. It was empty. He was really gone.

 

Goodnight felt his breath coming fast, felt his eyes starting to fill, and then with a keening sound that rose up from the depths of his heart, he started to cry.

 

He sobbed and sobbed, painful spasms that wracked his whole body as he took rattling breaths as he kept crying and couldn’t stop, tears leaking hot from his eyes.

 

Grief isn’t cold – grief is very very hot. And Goodnight’s grief was burning through him as he sobbed there on the empty bed, his skin flushed, his eyes hot with tears that spilled down over his face, his chest constricting and lungs burning from the strain of how hard he was crying.

 

He reached across the bed for Billy’s pillow and clutched it to him desperately, burying his face in it, sobbing all the harder when he could still smell the faint scent of Billy’s hair. If he shut his eyes it was like having Billy with him but he _wasn’t_ , Billy was gone, he was gone forever _._ That strong, brave, gentle, and vivid man that Goodnight had loved so much was _gone_ , and Goodnight thought he might actually die from the grief as it tore through him.

 

He didn’t die of course. He continued to cry, all of his tears soaking into Billy’s pillow, and when there were none left he sobbed dryly for hours, curled in on himself, his whole body clenching in anguish.

 

He cried until he just physically couldn’t anymore. And then shuddering and whimpering he closed his watery eyes, tears still burning in them. He wanted to stay awake, he dreaded his dreams, but he hadn’t slept at all the night before, and he was _so_ bone-weary from everything that he slipped into a darkness that was closer to being unconscious than it was to sleep.

 

Sometime later Goodnight woke up, his head pounding, his eyes and throat completely raw. He lay there in the dark room for a while, staring across the mattress at Billy’s spot, as empty as Goodnight felt. It felt so wrong. Apart from when they’d travelled with others, there had been very very few times they hadn’t slept side by side. He couldn’t believe it. He just couldn’t believe it.

 

He looked at the other side of the bed for a long time. And then he got up and went to the linen closet.

 

Five minutes later Goodnight was back at the grave. He stared at it heart pounding, his arms full of old blankets, the night wind whipping around him.

 

And then he set them down on the thin layer of snow beside the grave, making a pile and lying down on them, pulling even more blankets over himself. He stared at the mound of earth, tears welling up all over again but he swallowed them down.

 

And then he reached out and placed a hand over the cold soil of Billy’s grave, closed his eyes and went to sleep.

 

 

*

 

 

Goodnight didn’t sleep next to Billy’s grave again after that.

 

He wanted to. But he knew Billy wouldn’t like it.

 

*

 

 

Goodnight spent the next several days in what felt like a waking coma. He couldn’t sleep in the empty bed anymore and he spent entire days just lying curled up on the couch in icy shock, staring into the fire, his mind just spinning on a loop of _he’s gone he’s gone he’s gone he’s gone_ over and over, both reminding and convincing himself. He could hardly fathom it. He kept expecting to hear Billy’s steps on the wooden floor, to feel his fingers sliding through Goodnight’s hair, and to hear his voice, its accent soft, musical, and amused telling Goodnight to stop hogging the couch and move over to make room.

 

And then he would remember that Billy was gone and it would hit him like a cannon all over again. It never stopped being any less shocking. The world didn’t have Billy Rocks in it anymore and the world was crushing Goodnight from all sides.

 

So he lay there numb, curled in on himself, not eating, not crying, not talking, not even thinking beyond the fact that Billy was gone and never coming back.

 

He didn’t even have nightmares when he slept. His worst nightmare had already happened.

 

On the fourth day he was still there on the couch, still in the clothes he’d worn to sleep by Billy’s grave, only having gotten up mechanically to go to the bathroom or to throw another log on the fire. His stomach clenched over nothing and a pang of hunger shot through him, and it occurred to him he hadn’t eaten in days.

 

He curled up deeper into the cushions and shut his eyes. He couldn’t bring himself to care. Billy had been hungry too, hungry as he threw up absolutely everything in his stomach, but still managing to be strong even when he was being pulled down by death while Goodnight had sat there as healthy as a damned horse…

 

Goodnight shot up on the couch so quickly his head rushed and the room spun around him.

 

The horses…

 

“No, no, no,“ Goodnight babbled in a hoarse, weak voice, staggering to his feet and reaching for a coat as he stumbled to the door, stepping into a pair of heavy boots. He took off running across the front yard towards the stable, coat flapping behind him, panic shooting through him.

 

He burst into the stable, startling the horses who both looked up at him with wide brown eyes, panting heavily.

 

Goodnight leaned back against the door of the stable, overcome by guilt and relief. And then he snapped back into action and walked over into their stalls, smashing his elbow through the layer of ice where the water had frozen in their drinking buckets. The horses went immediately to take huge thirsty gulps of the icy water.

 

They’d gotten into the bales of hay in the stalls above them, rearing up and pulling the hay down, taking mouthfuls of it, so they wouldn’t have been hungry. But they’d probably just been licking condensation off the windows in their thirst.

 

One day later and they might have died. And if Goodnight had walked into the stable and seen what he expected – two animals lying dead and forgotten in their stalls, ribs visible, tongues out, eyes cloudy – it didn’t matter whether he thought he had the guts for it or not. Goodnight would have gone straight back to the house, gotten his rifle from the drawer he kept it in, placed the barrel beneath his chin, and put a bullet through his head then and there.

 

But the horses were alive, and Goodnight was too, and so he spent the next several hours getting them water and letting them drink as much as they wanted, arranging their food, and sealing up a few cracks he’d noticed in their stalls, the wind and snow whistling in.

 

He finished nailing some boards over a few thin cracks in one of the stalls and was about to go back into the house. But then he turned around to look back into the stall.

 

Billy’s horse was curled up on its bed of straw, hunger and thirst abated, still tired, but looking much more perked up. Billy’s horse looked up at him with its warm brown eyes, and Goodnight felt himself crumble as grief washed through him, not sharp, but hot and wet, trickling through him and melting away some of the numbness.

 

“I’m sorry, boy,” Goodnight got out, walking back into the stall which was swimming through his tears. He knelt down on the straw beside the horse and stroked a trembling hand down its glossy neck. “I’m so sorry.”

 

The horse turned its head towards Goodnight, whickering lightly, velvety lips snuffling at Goodnight’s other hand that was resting on his knee, as though Goodnight might be hiding oats from him the way Billy sometimes did. After Billy finished rubbing down his horse after a hard ride he would coax the animal over with some kind of treat, hiding it behind his back, eyes twinkling as the horse shoved its head under his arm, looking for it.

 

“He’s not coming back,” Goodnight said, voice cracking, tears streaming down his face. “I’m so sorry, boy, Billy’s not coming back.”

 

It was the first time he truly believed it.

 

He began to weep there in the stall, head resting against Billy’s horse. He wrapped his arms around the horse’s neck and continued to cry, not wracked with harsh sobs but a deep, steady weeping as his heart cracked like ice in frozen buckets, his loss pouring out of him in tears. He wept and wept and the animal sat there patiently while Goodnight held onto him, crying his aching heart out.

 

Eventually he sat up wiping his eyes.

 

“Oh lord,” he mumbled, running a hand over the horse. “Guess you haven’t had to see me do that for a while, huh?” The horses were no strangers to Goodnight’s occasional fits during the night, and they never spooked when Goodnight shot upright in his blankets, Billy cutting through the hysteria until Goodnight was shaking and crying but at least aware of where he was.

 

The horse nickered by way of a response and Goodnight realized it was the first time he’d used his voice since Billy had – since Billy had died. It had only been four days but he’d forgotten how strange it was to not talk.

 

“I’ll check on you tomorrow, alright?” he said with a final pat to the horse’s neck. He straightened up, his whole body aching and unaccustomed to the strain of moving himself. He left the stable, giving a pat to his own horse on the way out, his horse snuffling at his collar a little bit.

 

He went back to the house to go lie back on the couch. But before he did that he took a cue from the horses and got himself some food. He ate it mechanically and went back to the couch and curled up. The house still felt incredibly empty. But whether it was from getting up and walking somewhere, seeing the horses, or just plain putting something into his stomach, Goodnight himself felt a little more full than yesterday. Not much. But a little.

 

 

*

 

 

Goodnight visited the horses every day after that. Sometimes to feed them, sometimes to fetch them more water, sometimes to do minor repair work in the stables, sometimes to groom them, sometimes to sit in one of the stalls and just listen to the steady breathing of the animals.

 

Whatever he did he made sure to get up off the couch and go check on them once a day whether they needed it or not.

 

Because really it was Goodnight who needed it the most.

 

 

*

 

Spring kept coming. There’d been the first scents of green on the breeze when Billy had taken his final breaths out on the back porch, looking out over a slowly cracking lake. But the signs were becoming even more plentiful as they shot up out of the snow. More dark tufts of grass were making an appearance, the yard becoming muddier in small patches as the chunks of winter ice seeped into the ground. Clumps of snow started to drip off the green boughs of the evergreens, and their bark was becoming sticky with pungent sap that filled the air with a sharp piney odor. The air was redolent with the thick scent of pines in every breath. And each day it got just a little warmer.

 

Goodnight kept crying almost every day. Not because Billy was gone…but because of all the little ways in which he kept coming back. Especially when Goodnight wasn’t expecting it. His head had become a little less cloudy now that he was remembering to eat, and was getting up once a day to go look after the horses. But his heightened awareness just made it all the easier for Billy’s lingering presence to rush in, and when it did Goodnight was overcome with tears every time.

 

He cried when he looked over at the other side of the couch where Billy used to sit most often, sometimes curled up in the corner with his feet stretched out towards the middle to tangle with Goodnight’s, but usually sitting while propped up against Goodnight. If Goodnight ever got up Billy would mumble a protest and circle his arms around Goodnight’s waist immediately, lean all the way into Goodnight’s side and just breathe contentedly.

 

He cried when he found a black strand of Billy’s hair on a cushion, and then imagined how much Billy would probably tease him for getting emotional over a goddamn _hair_ , and the image of Billy gently laughing at him came to him so clearly it just made him cry more.

 

He cried whenever he looked up at the mantelpiece and saw the two wooden ducks that Vasquez had carved for them, still facing each other in harmony right until the end.

 

He still spent most of his time lying on the couch. Not moving, not even thinking until something happened that made him think of Billy, and he would start to weep.

 

But the more Goodnight cried, the more the shocked, icy numbness inside of him seemed to melt, trickling away like the snow outside.

 

And so the months passed. Goodnight only left the living room for three reasons: to go make food, to relieve himself, or to go see the horses. But every time he cut across the lawn to the stables, he would start to see more of the grass poking through the snow, or breathe in the heady scent of pine, or note that the chunks of ice breaking off in the lake were getting larger as they bobbed in the water, or sometimes catch just the faintest traces of wildflowers as the breeze carried them down the side of the mountain.

 

One day Goodnight was walking back from the stables, hands in his pockets, walking in the hunched way he knew he’d taken up after Billy died. He was in the middle of the yard, patches of snow thinner and farther between, the scent of wet grass coming up through the earth so rich that he just stopped and breathed, standing there in the yard with his eyes closed.

 

When he opened them again his heart clenched as he took in everything around him. His heart was aching at the signs of new life, but he didn’t cry, and every detail seemed sharper somehow when his eyes weren’t full of tears.

 

He took a shaky breath of the air, warmer lately but still with the invigorating traces of cold that still lingered. He stood and breathed and let his heart settle.

 

Goodnight glanced over to the forest that surrounded the cabin. Goodnight had always loved the outdoors. He’d loved running through it as a child, he loved riding through it with Billy, and he had barely even looked at it the past few months. Whenever he was outside he only ever looked at the stable or the house, walking the same unchanging path between them, not looking around enough at the signs of new life around him. Billy had died on cold, clear morning in the middle of March, and it was now May.

 

Goodnight wondered idly if the month was so named for the possibilities that came with Spring. New life, not all of it lasting, but some of it making it. All just a question of maybe.

 

Either way. Maybe it was about time Goodnight went for a walk.

 

He went back inside to fetch his rifle. Not because he had any intention of shooting anything whatsoever. Goodnight hadn’t shot any food recently, eating only what meat had already been smoked and preserved during the fall. Goodnight had never had the same anxieties over shooting animals as he did people. It was a circle of life he could understand, and no one was playing God in it. But even so, here surrounded by the first tiny signs of life all trying to make it, and after Billy…

 

Goodnight just didn’t have the heart for it.

 

But he wanted his rifle because a warning shot could always come in useful to scare predators. Once he and Vasquez had been hunting, travelling down a mountain ridge that wound into the valley below, and into the thicker forests. And then they’d stopped in their tracks because far off on a rock watching their approach was unmistakably a mountain lion.

 

They’d stood there looking at her, the large animal looking back. And Goodnight had raised his rifle into the air and fired off a shot that echoed through the valley, and the large cat had immediately turned tail and fled, bounding skittishly away down the rocks, away from the strange men and their loud guns.

 

Goodnight had been unable to fight a smile at the sight. For a moment the lion had reminded him so much of himself.

 

Back inside the house he kicked his boots off, leaving his coat on as he cut across the living room to the long chest of drawers. His rifle was in the top one where it wouldn’t rust. He slid the drawer open. And then his heart started pounding.

 

Lying on top of the rifle’s smooth wooden handle was an envelope. And written on that envelope was ‘Goodnight Robicheaux’, in what was unmistakably Billy’s handwriting.

 

Goodnight’s throat tightened as he glanced around the cabin. Still empty. He looked back at the letter, and with trembling hands he reached down to pick it up. He walked over to the couch and sat down, opening the letter with shaking hands.

 

The page immediately blurred in his vision because the writing was so vividly _Billy’s_. The sentences in a sharp, forward-leaning slant, the letters looking like they almost wanted to pile up on each other like the way Billy wrote in Korean, forming words from the top down.

 

Goodnight blinked his tears away, and sniffing his nose he started to read.

 

_Dear Goody,_

_First of all, don’t let the location of this letter bother you. I meant what I said: I know you’ll be okay. Just because I’ve left this letter over your gun doesn’t mean I think you’re going to – to quote you – ‘blow your brains out’._

Goodnight could practically hear Billy’s dry tone in the words and it made his heart clench in grief and fondness all at once.

 

_I’m just leaving it here so you’ll find it, because I know you’ll need your rifle at some point. Picturing you without your rifle is like picturing me without my knives: two people who are probably a lot more well-adjusted than we are._

Goodnight laughed out loud, a short bark of laughter that rang out in the empty room, the sound startling him. He hadn’t laughed in months. He turned back to the letter, swallowing hard.

 

_I guess I just wanted to thank you. For everything. I don’t know how else to put it. But thank you for being my friend when I didn’t know that I needed one. Thank you for letting me love you. And thank you for loving me back. For so long. I’ll love you always, and me dying doesn’t change a thing._

_I wish I was good with words like you are. So I hope it’s okay that I’m borrowing yours:_

_‘It would take a lot more than death to stop me from loving you.’_

_And that’s the truth. Just because I’m not there beside you doesn’t mean I don’t still love you. I loved you this morning, I’ll love you tomorrow, and I love you right now. If you manage to find happiness again, alone or with someone else, I’ll love you. If you never feel happy again, I’ll still love you. No matter what. I loved you for the rest of my life and I’ll love you for the rest of yours._

_I love you so much, Goody. I know I can’t stop saying it but it’s true. I love you, I love you, I love you. I meant it when I said you’re the best thing that ever happened to me. You talked about living a half-life before we met, but so was I. I was surviving. But I wasn’t living until you showed up. Didn’t even know what living was._

_I do know what living is now. I’m glad I got to do it for so long. And I’m glad I got to do it with you._

_Love always,_

_Billy._

_P.S. I know it’s no use telling you this is just a piece of paper and to not be sad when you eventually lose it over a cliff, or it gets wet, or I don’t know, one of the horses eats it or something. Trust me, I know how much you love paper with words on it. It’s enough to make a lesser man jealous. But think of it this way: if you ever do lose this paper, just remember that there’s not enough paper in the world for me to tell you how much I love you anyways._

 

Tears were streaming down Goodnight’s face and he took in a shuddering breath. He read the letter over and over until eventually he had to put it down because his hands were shaking so hard and he didn’t want to crumple it. He placed it carefully on the cushion beside him and buried his face in his hands crying violently, because he loved Billy _so_ much, and it was true, the man dying didn’t change a thing about that. Goodnight’s love hadn’t died along with Billy: it was pouring out of him, as true and alive as he was.

 

“Oh Billy,” he whispered into his hands, overcome by everything: loss, gratitude, and love, so much of it.

 

When he had collected himself again he straightened up, wiping his tear-stained hands carefully on his knees before picking up the letter again. He went and found an oilcloth to wrap it in, not wanting anything to happen to it despite Billy’s gentle chidings that it was just a letter. He would read it again and again and again until he had every word memorized, the sound of Billy’s voice filling him up, sometimes making him laugh, sometimes making him weep, sometimes overwhelming him with loss and anguish and despair, but always filling him up with love until it overflowed. He would read it again.

 

But right now, Goodnight was going to go for a walk.

 

 

*

 

Summer on the mountain was so vivid it almost hurt the eyes. It wasn’t the soft abundance of pastels that brushed over Louisiana fields, nor was it the burnished browns and golds of the desert.

 

Everything around the mountain was a sharp contrast of blues, greens, and whites, all of it ragged, wild, and radiant as it looked ready to take off into the clear blue sky. The mountain was coated with green, from the tops of the bristling pines to the verdant grass as it spilled down the sharply cut hills. It was shot through with white, from the snowcaps in the distance to the reflection of clouds that floated across the clear surface of the lake. And everything was lit up by blue, from the sparkling lake whose runoffs splashed down the mountain through rocky brooks, right up to the sky overhead that circled and arched over everything beneath.

 

Goodnight walked through all of it. Sometimes he rode, giving the horses some exercise after having been cooped up all winter. But he preferred walking. It gave him the sense of going somewhere even though he still couldn’t bring himself to leave the mountain entirely, and the memories of the last place Billy had been alive, as well as the ground he was now under.

 

Vasquez couldn’t have picked a better spot to dig Billy’s grave for them if he’d searched every mountain peak. Goodnight would often sit on the green grass that ran through the trees, looking out at the clear blue lake, and leaning against the white bark of the birch that fanned out over Billy’s grave, dappling it with its soft shade.

 

He liked it there. It was peaceful. Sometimes he would spend all day sitting there. It was better than spending all day on the couch inside, staring into space with an empty seat beside him. He supposed staring out at the sparkling water with clouds sailing over it, and the grassy mound of Billy’s grave beside him was as much as he could hope for.

 

But sometimes it made him heartsick. So heartsick he was scared he would lie down beside the grave and never get up. He missed Billy so much, with every breath, with every thought, and sometimes he felt unable to move from how much he missed Billy. If he stopped moving for too long he might stop moving altogether.

 

So mostly Goodnight walked.

 

He walked out into the woods, over the rocky ridges of the mountain, or through its steep meadows, the dark wildflowers sprinkled down their sides. He walked through every sign of summer, doing his best to take it all in as he walked further and further away from the cabin, and all the while knowing that one day he would have to leave it eventually. For all that he was a roamer by nature, sometimes he imagined the peace of being settled. But he didn’t know if it was right to settle here in what was only ever meant to be a resting place. For Billy it was a final resting place.

 

Sitting out in a meadow one day, surrounded by green craggy hills, breathing in the larkspur on the mountain breeze, Goodnight thought about what Billy had told him. About going to see Sam. Billy had suggested it as a solution for if Goodnight got too low, probably in the hopes that Sam would be able to set the spark of life back in him. Sam had done it once before. Maybe Billy was hoping Sam would be able to do it again.

 

But the thing was…there were the sparks of life in Goodnight already. He felt them when he groomed the horses, their warm skin rippling beneath the bristles of their grooming brush as they tossed their necks, their low nickers and huffs of air soothing sounds of life that surrounded Goodnight in the stable with its warm grainy scent of straw.

 

He felt them when he sat out by Billy’s grave, staring at the lake, not saying anything but sometimes feeling his heart clench at the flash of silver whenever a fish jumped.

 

And he felt them when he walked through the woods, managing to go a little further each day, his posture easing out of the stooped, slow, pained way he’d been carrying himself after Billy had died. He found himself straightening up bit by bit, taking his hands out of his pockets to brush along the bark of a tree, head tilting up a little higher to catch the scent of thistles, mountain harebells, and sky pilots, the small dark wildflowers blowing in the wind but their roots deep in the thin mountain soil and holding on fast.

 

Goodnight sat on the grass looking out at the hills, and realized he didn’t want to see Sam in the hopes that Sam would be able to save him. Goodnight just missed him.

 

He wondered if Vasquez had made it to Kansas. Goodnight missed Vasquez too. It was the first time he’d missed anything but Billy.

 

He missed talking to people. He missed living among them. He missed living.

 

It was about time he tried it again.

 

Goodnight got up off the grass, picking up his rifle which he slung over his back. The sun was still high in the sky but he had a long way to walk, back up over the hills until he reached the woods surrounding the cabin.

 

He was walking through the trees which were getting further apart the closer he drew to the cabin’s clearing when he heard a shout.

 

Goodnight stood stock still. He hadn’t heard a human voice in months, not since he’d sat out on the back porch with Billy.

 

But this was definitely a man, and a panicked sounding one at that. Goodnight took off running.

 

He burst through the trees and his eyes widened.

 

Vasquez was standing on the porch, looking wildly around the clearing. He caught sight of Goodnight standing by the trees and every line in his long body seemed to sag, and the man looked like he was shutting his eyes for a moment.

 

And then he was coming down off the porch and striding determinedly across the clearing towards Goodnight who left the line of the trees to meet him in the middle.

 

They collided in a hard, immediate hug.

 

“Holy shit _, hermano_ ,” Vasquez seemed to breathe in his ear, every rolling syllable coloured with relief.

 

“Vasquez?” Goodnight croaked out, hardly believing it even though the man was _right_ there, so warm, so solid, so present it was making Goodnight’s head spin.

 

Goodnight was in shock at hearing, seeing, feeling another person, especially when that other person was hugging him hard enough to squeeze the very breath out of him.

 

“I went inside and didn’t see you, didn’t see your gun, I –“ Vasquez broke off with a shuddering breath. “I thought you might have done something stupid.”

 

“Who me?” Goodnight asked with a strangled laugh, tightening his arms. He felt Vasquez do the same around him, somehow hugging him even harder.

 

They finally disentangled and drew back to look at each other. Vasquez’s eyes were red.

 

“Oh come now, I know you said Mexicans are emotional but this is just ridiculous,” Goodnight said jokingly, and Vasquez laughed while wiping his eyes.

 

“Ah _dios mío, cabrón,_ ” Vasquez said thickly, letting out another shaky laugh, reaching out to clap Goodnight on the shoulder.

 

“You alright?” Goodnight asked gently, still unable to believe Vasquez was actually _here_.

 

“Me? I should be asking you that question,” Vasquez said incredulously.

 

They stood there silently in the clearing for a few moments, and then Vasquez looked at Goodnight sadly.

 

“When did it happen?”

 

“March,” Goodnight said, swallowing around the lump that had appeared in his throat. He was used to thinking about it, but much less used to talking about it.

 

“Did he…I mean…was Billy…” Vasquez took in a breath before asking softly: “Was he in any pain?”

 

Goodnight bit his lip and shook his head. Billy had been in terrible pain in his final days, but the moment itself that Vasquez was asking about?

 

“It was peaceful,” Goodnight said to him, glad he could make the line of the man’s shoulders ease somewhat.

 

Vasquez swallowed and nodded at the ground, and Goodnight just looked at him.

 

“What are you doing here, Vasquez?” Goodnight asked gently.

 

“Just checking on you to see if you’d be crying your eyes out, but I guess that’s just me,” Vasquez said, huffing out a laugh, his eyes still a little watery.

 

Goodnight felt a stab of warmth for the man and reached out to rub his shoulder.

 

“You should have been here a couple months ago. You wouldn’t have been able to get a tear in edgewise.”

 

“Yes I should have been here,” Vasquez said, looking back up at him regretfully but resolute. “I would have come earlier I just didn’t know when I should.”

 

Goodnight was suddenly struck with a thought.

 

“Was checking up on me your idea or Billy’s?”

 

“Great minds can’t think alike?” Vasquez asked a bit sheepishly but he was smiling.

 

“Great minds? You two?” Goodnight scoffed gently. But his heart clenched at the fact that even now, Billy was still finding ways to look after him.

 

“Goody,” Vasquez said, drawing Goodnight’s attention again. Vasquez was looking at him softly.

 

“I’d have come to check on you anyways, _amigo_. Didn’t need anybody to tell me to do that.”

 

Goodnight took him in, so much the same as ever, stalwart and dependable for all of his seemingly endless energy. Goodnight remembered the last time Vasquez had ridden up to the cabin clear out of nowhere and Goodnight had practically fallen apart on him, so overwhelmed he’d been with preemptive grief about losing Billy.

 

Now he _had_ lost Billy. And he thought between the two moments he would have been more likely to fall to pieces on Vasquez now. But in all honesty? It was just _so_ damn good to see him that Goodnight actually felt a smile tugging up.

 

“Well hell you want to come in or what?” Goodnight finally asked with a self-deprecating laugh, gesturing towards the house that Vasquez had all but built.

 

“Yeah let me just go to the stable first.”

 

“You know where it is.”

 

 

*

 

Goodnight walked over to where Vasquez was already sitting, back in his chair like he’d never even left. Goodnight nudged his shoulder with the tumbler of whiskey he was holding.

 

Goodnight sat back down on the sofa across from his chair, shoving aside the blankets he’d been using ever since the living room had essentially become his bedroom. He was certain Vasquez was putting two and two together about where Goodnight had been sleeping by the state of the living room, but he was also certain the man wouldn’t even blink.

 

And Vasquez didn’t. He just looked at his glass for a moment before lifting it up a little.

 

“Hey,” he said quietly, looking at Goodnight. “To Billy.”

 

Goodnight felt his eyes prick with tears but he lifted his glass as well.

 

“Billy,” he said softly.

 

They drank silently, the liquor burning down Goodnight’s throat.

 

Vasquez took another swallow and idly thumbed the rim of his glass, looking down into its contents.

 

“You know, I gotta tell you something, _hermano_ …” he started.

 

Goodnight looked up at him curiously and Vasquez cracked a smile at him.

 

“This tastes like shit.”

 

Goodnight laughed, only the second time he’d done so since Billy had died.

 

Vasquez looked like he was trying not to laugh and Goodnight grinned at him sheepishly.

 

“It was the only bottle in the house,” he explained. “We finished everything while you were still here, and this one was just gathering dust.”

 

Goodnight hadn’t even been physically able to get up and go into town to get anything decent. Probably for the best.

 

“You didn’t touch it?” Vasquez asked. He looked surprised that Goodnight hadn’t drunk himself stupid after Billy had died, and his face flickered into guilt from accidentally implying that’s what he thought Goodnight would have done. Any other bottle and he wouldn’t have been wrong, but…

 

“Boy I wouldn’t touch this whiskey if it was the goddamn apocalypse,” Goodnight said with mirth bubbling up, and Vasquez burst out laughing.

 

“You don’t have to drink it,” Goodnight added as he laughed too.

 

“You kidding me? I finish what I start,” Vasquez said with a grin, lifting his glass to his lips again, repressing a shudder.

 

Goodnight shook his head smiling and he leaned his head back against the couch, closing his eyes.

 

When he opened them again Vasquez was looking at him softly.

 

“So how have you been?” he asked. “Really?”

 

“Well I’ve been better,” Goodnight said, mouth twitching sadly. “But…believe it or not…”

 

He could still remember the sharp piercing agony that had ripped through him on the first day. And then the following days of numbness. And then how the numbness had cracked and he couldn’t stop crying. About how full of grief his bones had been even when he was still managing to get up. But he also thought about how the more he picked himself up, the more his head cleared, making his grief sharper, but the good memories sweeter.

 

“Believe it or not, I’ve also been worse,” he finished quietly. He meant it when he’d told Billy he’d seen hell. These days Goodnight was still frequently overcome with heartache, but in the war he’d been absolutely heartless. Goodnight knew which of the two he considered worse. He preferred it when the only person who was hurting was himself.

 

But that wasn’t strictly true. Goodnight looked at Vasquez who was staring back into the whiskey glass. He and Billy had been friends too.

 

“What about you, how have you been?” Goodnight asked. “Did you end up staying in New Mexico?”

 

“Yeah,” Vasquez said looking up. “Warmer than here.”

 

“No trouble?” Goodnight asked, knowing Vasquez had been on the run when Sam had found him.

 

Vasquez shook his head. “Nah, not at all. Haven’t seen any action since Rose Creek honestly. Doubt anyone’s even still looking anymore. Sam was the only one who ever came close anyways.”

 

“You know,” Goodnight started, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re just about the nicest outlaw I’ve ever met. ”

 

It wasn’t the first time he’d had the thought. Even back in Rose Creek, however quick the man was with a gun, dangerous smile preceding dangerous aim, he had always just seemed so…normal. Maybe ‘normal’ wasn’t the right word for any of that particular merry band, but Vasquez had always given off the impression of being more together than any of them.

 

Vasquez looked at Goodnight a bit sharply. “You never did ask why I had a price on my head. Neither did Billy. Neither of you asked once.”

 

Goodnight knew Vasquez was wanted for murder but hell, Goodnight had blood on his hands and so did Billy. War and bounty hunting and fast-draw competitions might have given their deeds a certain degree of ‘legitimacy’, but the fact remained that they had both been killers. Goodnight was one hundred percent certain any murders Vasquez had committed didn’t even come close to his own, or Billy’s for that matter. But Goodnight knew more than anyone that that wasn’t how these things worked. There was no minimum amount of people you need to kill for it to affect you. One could sometimes be one too many.

 

“All Sam told me was that ‘maybe he had it coming’,” Goodnight said.

 

“Did he now?” Vasquez suddenly looked both thoughtful and amused for some reason. He took another sip of the awful whiskey.

 

“Well he did. Have it coming that is,” Vasquez said. “Was walking through a town, saw a man taking a horsewhip to a little kid. It was a shoeshine boy only he hadn’t shined the man’s shoes to his liking. I jumped in to stop him, man pulled out a gun.”

 

Vasquez shrugged.

 

“I was faster.”

 

“That’s it?” Goodnight asked surprised. General understanding was that all is fair in drawing back if the other man does it first. It could sometimes lead to further trouble, but not usually the five hundred dollar reward kind of trouble.

 

“If only,” Vasquez said ironically. “Turns out that man had friends in high places. Brother was a judge. The Honourable Orson Porter, only not such an honourable guy after all, huh?”

 

His jaw ticked, like he was holding back a snarl, and Goodnight was reminded of the carved coyote behind Vasquez on the mantelpiece.

 

“Anyways that’s who put the bounty on me, and who’s gonna believe the Mexican against a judge? So I took off. It was that or the rope.”

 

“And then Sam found you and the next action you saw was only in Rose Creek?” Goodnight asked.

 

“Pretty much,” Vasquez said. “Some trouble before that, but twirl your gun the right way and look at someone mean enough, people would usually steer clear.”

 

Goodnight’s lip twitched. It was just strange to think that among the seven of them it was ‘the outlaw’ who probably had the cleanest record of them all.

 

“Vasquez,” Goodnight started to say, but didn’t know how to put it. Finally he looked at him directly.

 

“That man could have had it or coming or not, and it wouldn’t do a thing to change my opinion of you. Or Billy’s. Not after everything you did for us.”

 

He suddenly felt a lump in his throat and added a bit more softly: “How could it?”

 

Vasquez smiled and swirled the drink in his glass.

 

“At any rate,” Goodnight said breaking the silence. “Natural-born desperado or not, you did wear the robes of it very well I must say.”

 

“Yeah well,” Vasquez said shrugging. “People wanted a glamorous Mexican outlaw so I gave it to them.”

 

He paused.

 

“Not saying I didn’t enjoy some of it though,” he added, with a bit of a twinkle in his eye.

 

Goodnight let out a huff of laughter, leaning back further into the sofa.

 

“You know I think that’s why Billy and I got along so well back then,” Vasquez said suddenly. Goodnight stayed leaning back but it was like every nerve in his body was geared towards Vasquez’s next words. Desperate for any words about Billy that weren’t just the ones in his head.

 

“I could tell he had a costume too. Everybody needs one. But I guess his just seemed a little more familiar to me, you know?”

 

Vasquez smiled into his drink. “Probably looked up to him a bit too. He was always nice about it.”

 

Goodnight smiled. “He liked you a lot. And I always did like that you two got along. Even back then. He never really got to have that kind of thing very much. With people who weren’t me.”

 

“You know we talked about you once,” Vasquez said. “In Rose Creek that is.”

 

“Let me guess…night before Bogue arrived?” Goodnight asked, and then felt a stab of regret, but for once it wasn’t about his running off. It was because it was just one less night he’d gotten to spend with Billy. He’d never have any again.

 

“He seemed pretty upset,” Vasquez said quietly. “First time I saw him drink anything. But when I went to ask him how he was doing he said he wasn’t upset you had left. He said he was just upset that you were still hurting enough to do it at all.”

 

Goodnight swallowed and looked down.

 

“But,” Vasquez continued, “He also said you’d come back. He was convinced.”

 

“Was he now?” Goodnight mumbled, blinking back the moisture in his eyes. His throat suddenly felt so tight. Billy had said as much to him, but he didn’t know Billy had been convinced of it from the get go.

 

“He said something like how you were ready, even if you didn’t know it yet, but you’d be ready when the time came,” Vasquez said. “Didn’t really know what he meant by it, but he wasn’t surprised you came back.”

 

“And just for the record?” Vasquez added. “Neither was I.”

 

Goodnight looked at him, mouth tugging up. “Bullshit.”

 

“Well maybe more so in hindsight,” Vasquez said with a laugh. “But no I wasn’t. When I said everybody has a costume? I knew you had one too. And I knew it wasn’t nearly as careless as you were aiming for, _hermano_.”

 

They sat drinking in silence for a while, but it wasn’t necessarily a bad silence. Goodnight thought about Billy, grateful for the memories Vasquez had offered. Having memories of Billy spread out didn’t make them thinner. If anything it helped to know Billy still existed in places that weren’t just Goodnight’s mind.

 

Eventually Goodnight looked up at Vasquez thoughtfully.

 

“Why aren’t you in Kansas?” Goodnight asked. “Not that it’s not damn good to see you but…I thought you were planning on seeing Sam.”

 

“Well that’s the thing,” Vasquez said a bit hesitantly. “I still am planning to. But I just thought…I mean I understand completely if you’d rather stay here but I was kind of hoping…”

 

He bit his lip as he looked at Goodnight. “Any chance you’d like to join me?”

 

Goodnight only just managed to keep his breathing steady.

 

“This Billy’s idea too?” Goodnight asked.

 

“Checking in on you was Billy’s idea,” Vasquez corrected. “Asking you to come to Kansas with me was mine.”

 

“He didn’t tell you he told me to go to Kansas too?” Goodnight asked.

 

“No,” Vasquez said frowning in thought. “He never mentioned anything like that.”

 

And Goodnight remembered Billy had only suggested that to Goodnight after Vasquez had left.

 

“Look, I’m not asking because anyone told me to,” Vasquez said, cutting into Goodnight’s thoughts. “And I’m not asking because I feel sorry for you either. I’m asking because…ah _maldito_ , I’m asking because you’re my friend, Goody.”

 

Goodnight had been feeling flares of life here and there over the past few months. Fleeting but vivid. Slowly smoothing out into a low thrum. And sitting there on the sofa listening to Vasquez’s words, he felt that thrum spark into a steady warmth, like embers that just needed that little bit of fresh air to light up again.

 

Billy’s letter had thanked Goodnight for being his friend when he didn’t know he needed one. And Billy was right. People needed friends whether they knew it or not.

 

And Goodnight did know it. There he’d been that very morning, sitting in the hills and thinking how he missed both Sam and Vasquez. How he missed other people. How he should start thinking about getting moving and seeing them again.

 

And who should show up that very day but Vasquez extending the very option Goodnight had been considering anyways?

 

It might have just been his many superstitions talking…but Goodnight knew what a sign looked like when it was staring him right in the face.

 

Billy had told Vasquez that Goodnight would know when he was ready for something when the time came.

 

It looked like Billy was right again.

 

“Goody,” Vasquez said again, and Goodnight glanced back at him. “You wanna join me?”

 

Goodnight nodded, feeling tugging at both his lips and his heartstrings.

 

“I really do.”

 

A slow smile spread across Vasquez’s face.

 

“You wanna drink to it?” he asked, holding up his glass and waggling his eyebrows.

 

Goodnight looked at the disgusting whiskey in their glasses and broke out into a real grin.

 

“I really don’t,” he said laughing and Vasquez joined in as they tossed the rest of their drinks back anyways, wincing at the bitterness but having a reason to smile after it too.

 

*

 

 

 

They left on a clear July day in 1885.

 

It took them a week to get together anything they’d need, stock up and close the cabin.

 

Goodnight had spent the week sleeping in his bed and not on the couch. It hadn’t been easy the first time. But Kansas was a month away and finding Sam would take longer. He didn’t know when his next opportunity to sleep in a bed would even be.

 

Finally they were out in the front yard dressed in travelling clothes, the horses loaded up, but both of them standing on the grass and staring at the house.

 

“Well, it’ll make a very well-equipped place for someone someday,” Vasquez said with a huff of laughter, looking around at all the upgrades that never would have happened if he hadn’t shown up.

 

Goodnight glanced at him, holding up a hand to block the summer sun that was streaming even past the brim of his hat. Vasquez was looking around a little wistfully and despite everything Goodnight couldn’t help smiling.

 

“That why you spent so long with us?” he asked teasingly. “Just wanted us to be well-equipped?”

 

“Maybe I had nowhere else to go,” Vasquez said. He glanced at Goodnight who was giving him a skeptical look.

 

“Maybe the company wasn’t bad,” Vasquez said with the beginnings of a smile. Goodnight snorted.

 

“Maybe…” Vasquez said, looking back at the house. “Maybe it’s because I found you guys and I just felt responsible.”

 

He went quiet and Goodnight felt a deep stir of affection for this man who had nothing better to do than completely change the attitude and outlooks of two men trying to manage the worst thing they’d ever gone through.

 

“Well it was very kind of you either way,” Goodnight said quietly. “But you don’t have to feel like you’re responsible for us any more. Or for me.”

 

Vasquez glanced at him.

 

“I know,” he said thoughtfully. “But maybe I’d like to be.”

 

Goodnight smiled at him and Vasquez smiled back.

 

“So is that why you –“

 

“ _Jesu Christo, hermano,_ save some mystery for the road why don’t you?” Vasquez said laughing.

 

Goodnight laughed too. “Right. Anyways I’ll meet you in town, yeah?”

 

“Yeah. I’ll meet you at Doctor Black’s when you come down,” Vasquez said about to turn to his horse, the same white one he’d had in even in Rose Creek. But he turned back to Goodnight, eyes soft under the dark brim of his hat.

 

“Take as much time as you need, Goody. Alright?”

 

“Alright,” said Goodnight quietly, gratefully. Vasquez reached out and clapped him on the shoulder giving it a squeeze, and then was heading back to his horse and swinging himself up, setting off out of the clearing at an unhurried walk.

 

Goodnight didn’t bother watching him go like he did last time the man left. He’d see him again soon.

 

He went back into the cabin and took a final look around the place, this last place he’d stayed with Billy. The kitchen table that had seen so many of their conversations. The couch where they’d curled up so many evenings, reading or talking or lazily kissing, not wanting to be parted for a second. The carpet in front of the fireplace where they had made love and where they’d sat looking into the warm flames and discussed heaven and hell and everything in between.

 

Goodnight’s eyes felt wet and he glanced up at the mantelpiece, walking over to the two ducks Vasquez had carved for them. They were still facing each other and he blinked back his tears as he stroked them both with a shaking finger. He’d thought about taking one with him and leaving the other on Billy’s grave. But it didn’t feel right to separate them.

 

He’d leave them where they were. Always facing each other, always together.

 

He sniffed and his gaze fell to the carved coyote beside them. His lip twitched as he brushed it thoughtfully with his finger too.

 

Five minutes later Goodnight was down by the lake, standing among the birches holding his hat in his hands, and looking down at the soft grassy mound of Billy’s grave. Wildflowers were starting to grow beside it, and the faint scratching of Billy’s name was still visible in the tree’s bark.

 

That hairpin hung on a chain around Goodnight’s neck now, directly over his heart. Goodnight wasn’t worried about it breaking the skin. It wasn’t like Billy hadn’t pierced his heart already.

 

Goodnight stared down at the grave. He’d sat by it a lot, always leaned up against the tree, maybe leaving a hand on the ground over where he imagined Billy’s heart was. But he’d always done it silently. He hadn’t spoken to Billy here at all. He wouldn’t have been able to bear not hearing Billy’s voice back.

 

But maybe…just maybe there was a chance Billy had been missing his voice too.

 

Goodnight swallowed and tightened his grip on his hat and swallowed once, hard.

 

“Hey Bill,” he whispered.

 

There was no reply. Just the faintest sounds of the water lapping at the grassy shores.

 

“I miss you,” Goodnight said, his eyes already starting to water. “God I – I miss you so much, Billy. All the time. I miss seeing your face, I miss hearing your voice. I miss making you laugh, and you making me laugh. I miss your smile.”

 

Goodnight buried his face in his hand, taking a deep gasping breath. When he pulled his hand away it was wet with tears.

 

“I just miss you, Billy,” he choked out, eyes red.

 

He took a step towards the grave and knelt down beside the tree. His throat was tight as he looked down at it but he managed to speak.

 

“I’m going away for a while,” he said. “I don’t know when I’ll be back. But I do know there’s not a minute I won’t spend thinking of you. I never stopped and I never will. You’ve been my every good thought ever since I met you.”

 

He reached out and rested his hand on the grave.

 

“I still can’t believe I’ll never see your face again,” he got out, voice thick. “I keep expecting to. I keep thinking you’ll be around every corner, just a step away. I…I can’t stop dreaming of you. You’re in every single dream.”

 

Goodnight’s chin trembled and tears were streaming from his face. His hand tightened over the grass.

 

“But they’re good dreams, Billy,” he gasped out, the words almost lost in how much his voice was shaking. “You’ve _never_ been a bad dream.”

 

He curled over the grave and started to sob, head resting against the birch tree. He let the tears work themselves out, running down his cheeks, falling to the soft grass, absorbed by the earth.

 

Finally he lifted his head, wiping his eyes. And he placed his hand carefully back onto the grave.

 

“So I’m going away,” he said again, clearing his throat. “And you’re gonna be here. And…and I don’t think I’m worried about owls anymore, Billy. For me or for you. But just in case –“

 

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a carving and set on top of the grave. The coyote stood steadfastly, feet firmly in the grass, wooden teeth bared at anything that would approach by land, water, or sky.

 

“Don’t worry. He’s looking after me too,” Goodnight said quietly.

 

He kissed his fingers, and was then gently pressing his hand to the grave, letting his eyes fall closed for the briefest of moments as he let the warmth of the earth fill his skin.

 

“I love you, Billy,” he said simply, his voice a little watery, but clear. “For all my life. I love you.”

 

He sat there quietly and listened to the sounds of the water and the breeze that rustled through the tops of the birch trees. Some of the breeze whisked down through the leaves to where Goodnight was sitting, brushing against his face. It felt almost like a caress.

 

And then he stood up, brushed off his knees, placed his hat back on his head, and was walking out of the thicket, his back held straight.

 

Back in the clearing he went and fetched the horses, his and Billy’s. He gave Billy’s horse a rub on the nose, smiling when its lips tickled at his hand.

 

He wasn’t sure what to do with Billy’s horse yet. Vasquez had said he didn’t mind bringing it with them. And maybe that’s what Goodnight would do. Maybe he’d lead Billy’s horse behind him through the mountains. Maybe he’d leave it in the town. Maybe he’d change his horse for Billy’s and ride it across the plains. Maybe he’d see if Vasquez wanted it. Maybe he’d give it to Doctor Black.

 

Life was just a whole lot of maybes until something felt certain anyways.

 

Goodnight got up on his own horse and took the reins of Billy’s horse in his hand. He rubbed them together thoughtfully, and some of Billy’s last words came back to him:

 

_“We had a good life.”_

“Yes we did,” Goodnight whispered in agreement. He looked down the mountain path that was brushed by firs, the summer sunlight streaming through the pines.

 

He didn’t know if the rest of his life would be any good. Maybe life would have some joy left for him. Maybe there would be only heartache. Maybe there would be both.

 

All Goodnight could was find out. So he flicked his reins and set off down the path, underneath the wide blue sky, with Billy’s horse behind him and the rest of his life ahead.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
